


Hold On

by Starcrossedsky



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Political AU, Canon Is A Suggestion At Best, Canon-Atypical Acknowledgement of Trauma, Canon-Typical Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Jinchuuriki Nohara Rin, Kirigakure | Hidden Mist Village, Multi, Team as Family, Unintended Uses of Reverse Summoning Techniques
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 62,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24175084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrossedsky/pseuds/Starcrossedsky
Summary: hold on'cause the world will turnif you're ready or notObito isn't so stupid that he can't figure out when someone is just keeping him around to use him. He's going to get out of this goddamn cave no matter what the cost is to himself, and make his way back to his team so that they can all live happily together. Somehow. Eventually.Or: How to change fate by ending up in places you don't belong with alarming frequency.(Further tags to be added as story progresses.)
Relationships: Hoshigaki Kisame & Uchiha Obito, Namikaze Minato/Uzumaki Kushina, Team Minato, Team Minato & Uzumaki Kushina, Uchiha Mikoto & Uzumaki Kushina
Comments: 112
Kudos: 248





	1. Miniature Disasters I

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot give you any explanation for this except that I saw one other fanfic make mention of using reverse summoning to make a new summoning contract, and my brain proceeded to take that _one little tidbit_ and run with it to a truly wild extent. The result is this fic, which threatens to grow into an untameable monster. I make no promises of it ever being finished, or even of a regular update schedule beyond what I've already written. Until I _do_ run out of material, updates Wednesdays.
> 
> All references to octopus physiology have some basis in reality. However, some creative license: octopus behaviour has been applied. 
> 
> Chapter/arc titles are from KT Tunstall's discography until I run out of them.
> 
> Feel free to hit me up with any questions or comments, here or on my twitter or wherever else you might find me.

_miniature disasters and minor catastrophes  
bring me to my knees  
**but i must be my own master**  
or if a miniature disaster hits me  
it could be the death of me_

It's been something like three weeks, depending on how long you were unconscious in recovery. Long enough that the replacements for your crushed arm and side move mostly naturally, even if they don't feel like yours. (Long enough that you wonder if they ever will.) Long enough for the bloody scrapes and breaks in your face to have mostly healed over, down to just tender scars beneath your remaining eye.

The eye that sometimes seems to activate on its own, as though now that you've managed to lit the flame of the Sharingan once, it never wants to be put out for long. It makes your knowledge of all the cracks in the cavern ceiling above your bed freakishly detailed, to the point that you're sure you'll be able to draw them perfectly ten years from now.

If you live that long. You can't help the doubts you have about that, right now. You've been rescued, but you still haven't been told why, other than the fact that Uchiha Madara needs you for some reason.

You might be the worst Uchiha, but you know that name. Everyone in the history of the clan does. Even if it's just a fake using his name, it's cause enough for concern, and in this place that you can't leave with its strange plant creatures and a specter of a traitor, you don't think it _is_ a fake.

No, you're pretty sure that the man who calls himself Madara Uchiha, in the edges around your recovery, is somehow the real deal. His voices carries in to your recovery, sometimes directed at you, sometimes seemingly just musing to himself.

Three weeks, since you regained consciousness. Three weeks, and in that time you haven't needed any food, have been told that the only reason you need to sleep is because your recovery isn't yet complete, haven't been able to take more than a few shaking steps on one leg you were born with and one that was replaced while you were unconscious - 

Three weeks, since you last felt the wind or saw the sky. Three weeks, since the only people who made your life worth living left you for dead.

Your empty eye socket throbs, as it seems inclined to do when you think of Kakashi and Rin. Sometimes, when your body fails to respond to you and you're left staring at the ceiling again, you think that the throbbing is in time with Kakashi's pulse, wherever he is. It's certainly not in time with your own, which has slowed so much that a medic trying to find it would probably declare you dead before they succeeded.

(Of course, at least one medic already has.)

( _You'd better have gotten her home, Kakashi._ )

By now, you're sure they've finished the mission, gotten home. You believe that with every fiber of your being, both the ones you still have and the ones that got cut off or left behind under a rock. They got home, and you're sure your name has been added to the list of Killed In Action, growing every day. And then they told Sensei, and your grandmother, and Kushina-san, and...

You have to get back. In wartime, you might not have even gotten a proper funeral, without a body to bury. Just Kushina-san with one arm wrapped around Rin's shoulders as they cry, Kakashi standing off to the side awkwardly, his hand pressed over your eye.

(You saw it so vividly, one of the few times you managed to sleep, that you wondered if it was really a dream.)

You have to get back. If only you could get out of this damn cave. Or stand up long enough to make a decent attempt at escaping, even. It's not even a chakra problem - your reserves are as good as you think they're going to get, and a good bit larger than they were before you activated your Sharingan and everything after.

You stare at the ceiling, and practice moving your replacement hand through hand seals at random. You don't channel any chakra into it, not wanting to activate some kind of unknown jutsu unintentionally, but just going through the motions is calming. Rat, ox, tiger, rabbit... The rote motion is calming and almost meditative, but eventually boring, so you start going through all the jutsu you know, just to make sure you haven't lost any. You start with the Uchiha fire jutsu, and from there move on into the ones Minato-sensei taught you, a random mix of common jutsu with at least one of each element, summoning jutsu even though you never signed a contract...

You freeze, partway through the motions of that one, and your hands drop heavily onto your chest.

It's not... _not_ a way out. Sensei told you that people who don't have a contract can use the Reverse Summoning Jutsu to travel to the realm of the summons in order to sign one. You don't have a contract, not a good enough Uchiha to have signed any of the ones in the clan's keeping, not when you were just a dead-last kid who couldn't even manage to activate the Sharingan.

(You made it to chuunin _without_ the Sharingan. No other Uchiha has ever done that; so what if it's because none of them have ever needed to? It's proof that you don't need the Sharingan to be a good shinobi. You repeated those words to yourself after Rin said them to you, the two of you beaming at each other over the paperwork for your promotions, and you remember the feeling of the tears welling up in both your eyes the way they're never going to again.)

(Who cares, if it was only because the war called for more chuunin than the exams could produce? You did it all on your own, without the clan's help.)

If you're lucky, maybe you'll wind up in the land of one of the clan's summons anyway, and they can send you home from there. Even if you don't, you surely have a better chance escaping there than here, right?

It's a desperate option, but it's your last option. Your only option, aside from going along with whatever Uchiha Madara has planned for you. And that's just not going to happen.

You don't try to sit up, sure that it will attract one of your minders, and if you're going to escape by jutsu, you can't risk that interruption. You make seals over your chest, once for practice, to be sure you remember all of them. Then you use the tiniest bit of chakra to sharpen your teeth - it was Kakashi who taught you to do that, not Sensei, because Kakashi had been doing it since before he left the Academy and couldn't believe that not everyone knew how without being taught - and bite down on your flesh-and-blood thumb. The taste of blood fills your mouth again, an unpleasant reminder that makes your breath catch and your Sharingan flare to activation.

You take a deep breath, and then make the seals with your bloodied hands, jerking upright at the last second to slam your palm down onto the slab of stone that serves as your 'bed.' You dump as much chakra as you dare into the technique, hoping, praying - 

The last thing you see, before smoke blurs away your vision, is the Zetsus, too slow, too _complacent_ to react to what you've done, reaching out to grab you, but you're already gone.

The great thing about the Sharingan is that you'll always remember the looks on their faces. Stupid plant freaks.

\----

The jutsu yanks you somewhere behind the stomach, and then you're elsewhere. Somewhere _wet_ , is your first impression. Wet, and dark, and then you realize that you're underwater and you're suddenly incredibly grateful for the weird plant parts making your body sort of corpselike, because otherwise you definitely would have drowned on that first gasp of water and bubbles.

Okay, that wasn't an outcome you planned on. You've never heard of any Konoha shinobi with water summons; they're usually limited to Kiri-nin, maybe Ame or Taki, but those villages usually have fresh water summons, and renewed pain in your empty eye socket makes you intimately aware that this is the ocean, even more than the taste of salt and seaweed in your mouth. You're really, _really_ lucky that your escape plan didn't end right there.

At least the water makes it easier to 'stand,' as your uncooperative plant leg doesn't need to support your weight. You half-float, half-tread as you take in your surroundings. It's some kind of cavern, dim enough that you can only make out the details you can because your Sharingan is much better at dark places than a normal eye. Long trains of what look almost like lanterns hang from the ceiling, glowing dimly orange and moving gently in the currents.

The cavern wall opens its eye. You yelp, a last few strangled bubbles escaping your throat, and try to kick away, but there's not all that far to go. At least that eye isn't _that_ much bigger than you, even if you're for a moment mystified as to what kind of creature has eyes like that, a pupil a solid black bar across a round iris.

 _And what do we have here?_ asks a probing thought, not your own but entering seemingly through your gaze locked with the eye opposite yours. It's words and it isn't, something just a little wrong, a little bit too alien.

A piece of wall detaches from its position and comes close to you, and finally you're able to place what kind of creature you're looking at, as the line of suckers revealed on the underside of the tentacle makes it all too clear. An octopus, easily as large as the grand summons in storybooks and histories, the sort of thing that only the likes of the Sannin can summon. You didn't even know there _were_ octopus summons.

You bow, awkwardly, in the water, and say, "Please don't eat me, octopus-sama," as politely as you can.

Something like a laugh, a ripple of a current through seaweed, blooms in your mind. _Don't worry, little snack,_ the voice says, and you think it might be feminine but you can't entirely be sure. _I won't be eating much of anything anymore._

"Oh," you say. Making words around the water is hard, so you consider your next words carefully. "Are you sick?"

Even if it's a giant summon octopus, apparently you're still just the biggest sucker of all shinobi-kind.

Another of those ripple-laughs, and the octopus aims one of those currents at you, catching you against her suckers before you tumble backwards in the water into the long chains of lights. The tentacle isn't slimy the way you might have expected, at least not overtly; it's just soft skin over muscle, kind of like the inside of your mouth.

The great eye tilts up to the strings hanging behind you, and you turn to look at them. Your Sharingan-enhanced vision picks out faint shapes in the ovals, slow pulses, the beginnings of life. 

Eggs. You've summoned yourself into the cavern of an octopus mother and her thousands of eggs.

 _I will not leave them,_ she says into your mind. _And when they hatch, they will be in need of a first meal. So there is little point in eating you, child. You are lucky. I can send you back before they hatch, and you can go back to your shinobi life._

You know it's not polite, but you snort before you can catch yourself. If you were lucky, you wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. Then you turn to look back at her.

"I wouldn't have come here if I had any other option," you say. A probing sort of curiosity, not quite a question, enters your mind.

 _Tell me your story, then_ , comes the response, and with it some insight into how to share the thoughts in return. You're hesitant, but it's easier than speaking in this salt water - your throat is already sore - so you start to try to tell her. 

It's more like impressions than words. _trapped no way home everyone thinks I'm dead what did I have to lose?_ and the sight of Rin's tears as she took your eye, the last thing you thought you'd ever see, the tickle of chakra and not-quite-gone as she transplanted it into Kakashi, the feeling of their chakra off into the distance. Pain, pain, and Madara's voice, and the foreign flesh against your side - 

The octopus closes her eye, and curls her arm to press a couple of suckers against the bare flesh of your side. _So, that is why you came to this place._ And flashes come back to you in return, her impressions of _you_ , in need of escape, alone in a large clan, the regrowth of limbs, a life lived bright and violent and short even by the standards of your environment. It takes you a moment to realize that what she's expressing are commonalities between you, the reasons that you were drawn to this part of the summoning realm when your chakra was reaching out to find where it _fit_.

Not all of the commonalities are good. For a moment, you feel yourself teetering on the edge of what you're willing to do, as _willing to eat your own_ and _camoflagedeceptionshapeshifter_ drift past on the current. Not just what you are, but what you have the potential to be, the darker places inside your soul. 

Another amused ripple. The tip of her tentacle wraps back to lift your new arm away from your body.

 _It isn't the summoning contract that you seek,_ she says, _but there is room for one more egg in this clutch, and this will do for a yolk, if you wish._

You gulp, as the terms make themselves a little more explicit in your mind. You've heard of transformative summoning contracts, though you don't know of any for certain in your village. (For _certain_ , because there have always been rumors about Orochimaru of the Sannin and just how close he is to his snakes.) 

But if it will restore your arm and your leg, instead of leaving you at the mercy of the replacements Zetsu attached to you... You're still not sure that they won't just take control of your mind. A body that's yours and only yours, even if it's altered by a summoning contract that's more in your flesh than a scroll...

It seems like a fair deal to you. Even if it takes your Sharingan, you think you'd still consider it a fair trade. (You got this far without it.) Even if you might not survive the results...

"Okay," you croak out. "Let's do it."

(You don't have anything to lose.)

Two more tentacles uncurl from the walls of the cavern, as she blows another stream of water over you, and your last sight is of them making some sort of seal, before everything goes blank.

\----

You drift in and out of consciousness, with no idea how long you spend in the world of summons. Time, and a lot of other things, seem to lose their meaning as you dream.

You take the peace and calm while it lasts, the fragments of the thoughts of your clutchmates flickering through your mind. The pain is gone, for now, and hunger is abated, for now, but that will not last forever.

Later, you will find out that normal, mundane octopuses don't fight their siblings for their first meal, to avoid death and cannibalization in what almost feels like a dark ritual of birth. But summon creatures are as much like shinobi as they are like their mundane counterparts, and shinobi have been sharp and competitive and violent for hundreds if not thousands of years. What humans do with chakra has changed the nature of all beings that use it.

So you know, in the moments you have enough of yourself to have a self. You know what's coming.

(Of the twenty thousand or so eggs in this cavern, only around five hundred will survive long enough to escape it.)

(You have no choice but to be one of them.)

\----

You come fully aware when your Sharingan comes alive in your head, almost glowing red against the inside of the egg when you open your eyes. 

Eyes, plural. That's an unexpected bonus. Only one of them has the supernatural sharpness of the Sharingan, which is the only reason you noticed immediately, the hyper-detail of your old eye and the relatively normal vision of your new one standing sharply at odds. 

It's an unexpected bonus to have the eye back at all, and you can't resist shifting to press your hand over it, blocking out vision as you press your palm into the working socket, feeling the familiar pressure of an eyeball underneath.

(You're almost glad that there isn't Sharingan in it. It would have cheapened your last gift to Kakashi, somehow, if there was.)

Around you, everything is shifting, and everything is still. The massive presence of chakra in the center of the cavern (a clearer memory of a mother than the mother you had, and that's just par for the fucked up course that your life has taken since taking that last mission) is gone, no more gentle currents billowing through the array of eggs. And in response, not only you, but also all of your 'siblings' have woken up, a mental chatter of newborn minds that buzzes at the edge of your thoughts. 

You squirm and kick out with what was your bad leg, marvelling at the restored sensation in the new flesh, and that's how all hell breaks loose. The soft eggshell bursts at the impact, at the same instant as thousands of others, and the battle is on.

Seawater floods your senses, pouring into your mouth and nose, into gill flaps behind your ears and just under your ribs. Around you, tiny and not-so-tiny octopus infants throw themselves out of their eggs in turn. And almost immediately, they tear into each other viciously, beaks and arms tearing at each other, snapping the eggs of those who aren't swift enough to escape.

The buzz turns violent, bloodthirsty, and immediately you start to feel the deaths of newborn siblings. It calls up something in your blood, just as vicious and _hungry_.

(Willing to eat your own, indeed.)

Everything blurs together, tangles of limbs - you're more efficient at ripping bodies apart than your siblings, the way your arms work different enough from tentacles to give you an advantage. But their grip and crushing strength is stronger than yours - you rip them off you and often you're left with a suckered arm still stuck to your skin, trying to squeeze even after the death of its owner. A venomous bite stings your leg, but the wound clots more quickly than you would have thought possible underwater.

You give as good as you get, your blood sticking out as the only clouds of red in a sea of blue. 

(It reminds you of the red of a clan symbol on navy kimono.)

You sink to the bottom of the cavern, where there's enough of a floor to give you something familiar enough to be called footing, and you guard that spot ferociously, chakra sticking you to the rocks under your feet. One of your arms gets dislocated, not just the shoulder but the elbow and wrist as well, yanked out too far, but once you get it free, you pull it back into proper order with nothing more than muscle and chakra. 

The screams of the dying resound in your mind, even as the better fighters begin to claim victory and the more sly disguise themselves against the walls, the remains of eggs, and the corpse of their (your) mother.

And when the screaming has mostly faded away, the living eat the dead. You're no different from any of the rest, except for the constant swirl of your Sharingan, capturing every horrifying moment in perfect clarity.

You kill, and you eat, and only when you are sated and the water has begun to clear do you remember anything about yourself. Only when you remember yourself do you feel the _twist_ , as though something about you has changed utterly. Not your body, but you, Obito the person, looking through water tinted with blue blood and knowing that in the end, you're not any better - 

You sink in the water as you release your chakra from the stone. Your Sharingan burns, something alike to how it felt when it first awakened. 

And against your mind - 

_Territorial_ , one of your siblings calls you, somewhere between a name and an acknowledgement. He's one of the fighters, still alive in spite of losing two of his arms (one of them to your hands, solid and at odds with the translucent skin of the rest).

 _Grounded_ , says a sister, agreeing, amused. (She sounds like their/your mother.)

 _Defender_ , another agrees in turn, this one of those hidden in the rocks around you, almost invisible.

You inhale, exhale, the sensation calming even if the water filling your lungs is to no benefit when you're breathing through gills instead. You feel the naming passing around you, for themselves, and for you - in the end, it's something like, _one who won't be moved from where he chooses to fight_ , which is a densely packed little concept that's too long to really call a name. But it's yours, just the same.

One of them, Snap-of-beak-at-underside, brushes a tentacle through your hair, grown too-long in however long you were in the egg. The hunger is past, and the blood is cleared. 

You go from no siblings, to twenty thousand, to just under five hundred. 

You've had worse days, but not by _much_.

\----

They slip from the cavern in twos and tens, until you're almost alone. You don't want to go back to that cavern, but dismissing the reverse summoning won't take you anywhere else.

 _Not alone,_ says the twist-thought of one straggler. _Call us._

 _Squeeze through the gaps,_ suggests another.

 _Lie-deceive-play along,_ advises a third.

They're completely confident in you. You take a deep breath, and nod. You lift your hands to perform the seal to break the jutsu, but pause to look at your new hand. 

It's not quite the same as the one you lost. There are spots all along your skin, looking like freckles, which somehow strikes you funny enough that you chuckle into the water. Uchiha don't _get_ freckles. But it's far more yours than the one of strange white flesh, responsive and actually feeling like part of you. The same spots are scattered across your side and leg, as though you've gained spots instead of scars. 

The spots shift as you watch them. Camouflage, the same as how your siblings used to disappear into the rocks. Just like the regenerated eye, it doesn't feel wrong on your skin, the way the Zetsu limbs did. It just feels like a change.

You take a deep breath, flaring your gills this time, and then dismiss the jutsu with a pop and a puff of smoke.

Immediately when you reappear, you gasp. Seawater floods out of the gill slits at the base of your ribcage ( _so that's why they're there_ , you think distantly, _to drain the water from my lungs_ ) and you cough horribly. 

You're naked and soaked to the bone, but even if you aren't in any different place, you feel _better_ , more capable, your thoughts cleared. 

The cave is blessedly empty. There's not even the dim light that was here before, when you were recovering in this room. Running your hand over the 'bed' rewards you with a streak of now-wet dust on your fingers. You wipe it on your leg.

Time to find the way out.

\----

You find, via sticking to the ceiling, a small passage - calling it an air duct gives it too much credit in terms of being finished, but it's something. It doesn't seem large enough to fit you, but you remember the almost painless way your arm was dislocated and reset, and it's not like you have any other options, do you?

Somehow, you fit. You're pretty sure shoulders aren't supposed to bend that way, and you think your ribs disconnect from your sternum. You _know_ one of your hips dislocates, the leg twisted almost sideways, and you have to pull yourself along with just your hands, so it's incredibly slow, chakra-draining going.

But it doesn't hurt. Even if it reminds you of being trapped under that rock, so much that you have to stop constantly to just remind yourself that you're not in pain and you can feel all your limbs, you crawl towards fresh air and the distant light of the sky. It goes from almost blinding to the dim of sunset in the time it takes you to crawl the rest of the way out after you see it, and that's not until after a turn halfway through your trip that you're sure for a moment you're not going to be able to get through without _breaking_ some of the long bones in your legs, but you manage.

Somehow.

When you ooze your way all the way out the hole, you press your dirt-and-dust-covered palms into your closed eyes again, and give yourself ten minutes to put yourself back together and cry.

(It takes more than ten minutes for the tears to come and then expend themselves. More than fifteen or twenty, until your shoulders stop shaking and the sniffles go away.)

Then you pick yourself up, and look around. There's a weirdly massive tree wrapped around a statute, but no other landmarks, certainly none you recognize. Your view of the sky isn't quite good enough to use to navigate, so you set off with that intention in mind. Once you have some idea of what direction to go in, you can worry about how to get back to Konoha. Or, you can worry about clothes and shoes, _then_ getting back to Konoha, you amend when you trip, slide down some rocks, and scrape the hell out of your brand new elbow.

(You press your fingers to the space below your regenerated eye as you go, silently thanking Kakashi for forcing you and Rin through a basic course in star navigation, and Sensei for siding with him. You're never going to call his ideas for survival shit like this useless or paranoid again.)

\----

You get lucky, just enough clear sky to find a pointer star and the moon visible through clouds that look like the beginning of a storm. Judging from the season, it's been either hardly any time at all, or around a year since that mission. Your body seems to favor the 'year' guess, the move you move and investigate it - you're taller, with a larger chakra pool and a bit more (a lot more) hair, and your voice doesn't sound quite right when you step on a thorn and yelp loudly.

(Of course, that might also be the weirdness in your throat and lungs because you have _gills_ now. You'll deal with that question when there's someone you can ask about it, assuming that there's anyone at all.)

By the time it actually rains, it's been long enough that your hair is stiff with drying sea salt, too long to spike properly. You're grateful for the water washing out the grime and assorted bits of octopus guts (which you avoid thinking about any further), especially since being wet doesn't seem to bother you anymore. It's the most refreshing rainstorm you've ever experienced.

You pass a civilian farm, and stop long to snatch a too-big pair of pants. You don't take any shoes, though. There's a limit to what you're willing to steal, and that's anything more than the bare minimum. You've lost the calluses on your feet, though, and you can tell they're going to blister before too long if you keep up a shinobi's pace through the woods.

Better yet, though, the farmhouse leads you to a cart path (calling it a road would be giving it too much credit), which you can use to navigate towards a main road and a town in the distance. Even better, the town is one you recognize - one of the no-man's-land outposts that has traded hands between Konoha and Iwa two or three times already in the course of this war.

Less good, it seems it's changed hands again, as a pair of Iwa-nin guard the gates, their stone grey vests hard to make out from a distance until you activate your Sharingan for the enhancement to your vision alone. Once you do, you can suddenly see enough detail to even see the shapes on their forehead protectors, but your Sharingan itches and you release it almost immediately. 

Hopefully there isn't a sensor in the town who will clue them in to your passage. You backtrack and give the place a wide berth, and thankfully, you're not forced to fight off enemy ninja in nothing but a stolen pair of pants held up by fabric pinched in a clothespin.

You stay about half a mile east of the road after that, comforted by the empty night and the sound of the rain whenever you pause to catch your breath and check the location of the road. The stars are completely hidden away, now. You run until you can't anymore, but the forest is starting to become more familiar, and so as dawn breaks, you tuck yourself into a tree familiar from taking this road before, with your team, and try to get some sleep.

(It's better than the bare stone 'bed' of the cave, but not by much, and mostly improved only by the way the wet has become more comforting than disgusting. You miss your jacket.)

\----

When you wake, it's to a too-familiar flare of chakra, ringing in your chakra sense but mostly in the area around your eye, the lid and the scoop of your skull around it, itching its way up to your temple. You've never felt it like this before, this blend of yours-not-yours and lightning, but there's no doubt about whose it is.

_Kakashi._

You're awake instantly, Sharingan flaring impulsively to life as you cross the treetops. Your heart beats in your chest as you grin, already formulating how you're never going to let him life down needing to be rescued by you so many times.

 _Hi, Bakashi,_ you imagine saying. _I came back from the dead because I heard your ass needed saving again._

The scene that opens up before you is nothing open to something so lighthearted. Kakashi and Rin (no Sensei), surrounded by _Kiri-nin_ , of all things, a very long way from home and that front of the war. Your Sharingan almost bounces in your skull, analyzing, as Kakashi draws lightning to his fingertips - 

Behind him, Rin moves, and as your eye analyzes the motion, your heart comes to a complete stop. You can see it happening, a full second before it happens, half a second ahead of Kakashi, who will be half a second too _late_ \- 

Your eye screams to life on some deeper, awful level, and you're too far, _too far_ to do anything, and then you're _not_ , throwing yourself between them, back to Kakashi as you push her out of the way. There's something too thick about her chakra, tasting like the sea and desperation, and you try to pull her with you - 

Kakashi's hand goes through you. But Kakashi's hand goes through you, and Rin, as though the two of you were ghosts, and into the Kiri-nin that was his original target, harmless to you but destroying the enemy's shoulder in a shower of sparks and the smell of charred flesh. 

Your Sharingan still burns, but the burn is fading (even as it echoes where Kakashi's eye should be) even as it sucks down your chakra like - _don't think about octopus flesh sliding down your throat_ \- a dying man in the desert. Hands still around Rin's shoulders, you take another step, twisting to half-face Kakashi.

His eye, your eye - both are wide, and the Sharingan spins in a pattern you've never seen before, instead of the tomoe it should have. Connected streaks of black sweep through the red, even as Kakashi's gaze connects with yours.

The lightning dies from around his hand as he pulls it back through your ghostly bodies. The moment it's clear, you twist your arm around - vaguely aware that your shoulder joint has come apart again - and grab hold of his wrist.

Then you pull both of them with you, _away_ in a swirl of chakra, leaving behind nothing but a corpse and the rain.


	2. Miniature Disasters II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the problem is seals - especially malfunctioning jinchuuriki seals - the solution is Uzumaki Kushina.
> 
> (Or: When none of you have a mother to cry to, your sensei's wife will do.)

Kakashi's wrist is limp in your grip. There's still blood on it from where he thrust it through the Kiri-nin, and the taste of blood soaks into your fingers, along with the last traces of ozone. That's something to have a crisis over later. He doesn't resist, but doesn't respond either, the part of his face you can see above his mask blank with shock.

It's Rin who finds her voice first, tucked against your chest. It's so quiet you wouldn't be able to hear it, except that the space around you is so dreadfully _silent_ after the sounds of rain and combat, that you latch onto anything that isn't the sound of breathing. 

"Obito?"

She says it like she's afraid. She says it like a prayer. You drop Kakashi's wrist to wrap both your arms around her shoulders, pressing your face into her hair.

"Hi, Rin," you say quietly. "Sorry I was late." 

Rin doesn't reply. She just wraps her arms around you in turn and sobs loudly into your chest. You think that's pretty fair, since you're trying your hardest to not do the same thing into her hair.

It's Kakashi who says, "For once in your life, you were right on time." His voice is almost blank with wonder, but has the faintest hint of humor in it.

In the time it takes you to turn in his direction, tears escaping at your confusion that _Hatake Kakashi just cracked a joke_ , he throws his arms around you and Rin. Sharingan still active, you see that he's crying, too.

You don't deactivate your Sharingan as you hold onto them and cry. You want to hold onto this moment forever. Unfortunately, forever doesn't last nearly as long as you want it to before Kakashi pulls away, his arms falling off your shoulders. The Sharingan you gave him has gone back to the normal spin of tomoe, though it doesn't deactivate.

"Rin, what happened?" he says.

"I don't know," Rin answers, shrugging off one of your arms and taking a step away to look at him. Her hand presses into her chest, over her heart. "I couldn't control myself suddenly - some kind of control seal, I think."

"If that's true, the connection probably got disrupted when Obito took us - " Kakashi stops his muted speculation to glance around. You look around, too, for the first time taking your eyes away from their faces.

The space you're in is dark, and filled with blocklike shapes. Other than the three of you, and whatever is wrong with Rin's chakra that tastes like familiar sea-salt in the back of your throat, there's no trace of chakra anywhere. In spite of the darkness, you can see clearly, even when you deactivate your Sharingan, there's enough light from everywhere-and-nowhere, casting no shadows.

" - Took us here," Kakashi finishes, looking back at you as though you have the answers he's looking for.

"It was instinct," you say. "I think it's related to the Sharingan. Mine felt strange, and yours changed patterns."

Kakashi nods. "So did yours. I imagine they changed at the same time." He looks you up and down. "You better have a good explanation for where you were," he continues, "but save it for later. Those Kiri shinobi turned Rin into a jinchuuriki with an unstable seal."

"A - " you hesitate, your breath catching as you look back at Rin. That explains the feeling of her chakra, all wrong and threatening to explode out of her. 

"They were going to use me to let it loose in Konoha," she says, not meeting your eyes. "It's the Sanbi."

"Shit," you say, reaching up and stopping, surprised, when you remember your goggles aren't there. That's right, you're only wearing stolen pants and half a storm worth of rain. It's a wonder they recognized you at all. 

Then again, Rin is a sensor, and Kakashi has your eye. It's impossible to replicate a Sharingan.

"We need Sensei," you say.

"We need Kushina-san," Rin corrects. "If there's anyone who can fix this seal..." She reaches down, pressing her hands into the upper part of her stomach, just below her diaphragm.

"We need to get out of here, first," Kakashi says, and you want to laugh, want to cry again, at how familiar it all is. Kakashi seeing only the objective in front of his face, Rin keeping you all on track towards the greater goal.

And you?

"I don't think that will be a problem," you say, "but _should_ we? If Rin's seal does fail... I don't think there's anything in here that could get hurt." Expanding your chakra sense as much as you're able just gives you more of the same nothingness.

Rin takes a deep breath. "You're right. It's... safer for me to stay here."

"You're not staying here forever," Kakashi says, sharpand insistent. "I didn't get one comrade back just to lose another."

_Comrade_. He's never called you that before. You feel the edge of tears again.

"Where's Kushina-san?" you ask instead. "In Konoha?"

Rin nods, and then claps her hands excitedly. "She and Sensei got married! So he moved in with her." 

"Really?" you say, unable to stop the grin that takes over your face. "Oh man, I need to get them a present..."

"Of all the things to worry about..." Kakashi mutters. "Focus, Obito. Life and death situation."

"You sound like Minato-sensei," you tell him, but you refocus, activating your Sharingan again, and then that second layer of it. You feel it a little more clearly, this time, the way it seems to transcend the space around you.

"... I think I can take us there from here," you say. "Same blue house, right?" You'd met Kushina when Minato-sensei dragged your team through the D-rank of painting it that color of blue that looked more like the sky than the ocean. It turned out he'd paid for the mission out of his own pocket.

"Same house," Kakashi says. "I'll go with you."

But as he takes a step towards you, he wobbles, and winds up half-collapsing into your shoulder. You catch him reflexively, activated Sharingan making his path to the ground as obvious as a neon sign.

"You're not going anywhere," Rin says. "You've exhausted all your chakra - why haven't you covered your eye back up?"

She helps you lower Kakashi to the ground, and it's not until you have him laid out on his back that he answers.

"I don't want to forget this," he says. There's so much hurt in his voice, so much relief. It goes completely against the Kakashi you know, the way he turns his head towards you to keep the spinning red eye on you. "I don't want to miss anything."

Rin sighs heavily, and tugs his forehead protector down over the side of his face, covering up the Sharingan. 

"I'm not sure how I feel about you staring at me in Sharingan-level detail when I don't have a shirt on," you grumble. 

The tiny bit of Kakashi's face that's uncovered crinkles with laughter. "Nice freckles."

"They're not freckles!" you protest. "I'm - I'm going to get Kushina-san!"

Before you can actually jump into the portal that swirls into place, Rin catches your wrist. "I don't know if Kushina-san will believe it's you if you just show up like this in her living room," she says. "Take these. I'll watch Kakashi and make sure he doesn't pass out from chakra exhaustion."

Into your hand, she presses a familiar pair of goggles. One lens is scratched beyond repair. You stare at them for a moment, then close your hands tight around them.

"You kept..."

"Kakashi had a piece of you to take with him wherever he went," Rin says. "So I kept these."

You throw your hands around her shoulders and finally release a shaky sob. You stay there for a long moment, sniffling, squeezing the broken goggles, until Kakashi reaches out and flicks his fingers into your ankle. He's accented the flick with just enough lightning chakra that it feels like a really nasty static discharge.

"Go get Kushina-san," he says. "You can keep crying on us afterwards."

"Okay, okay, I'm going," you say. You open the portal again, letting it take you out of the dimension and into the Konoha night.

\----

You do not actually appear in Uzumaki Kushina's living room, because that is a good way to get yourself _murdered_ on _reflex_ , and instead appear in a tree next to the house. You know that Minato-sensei used to use this tree to come up and knock on her window in the middle of the night when they started being friends; she's told the story of knocking him out of it the first time, thinking he was ANBU or a kidnapper, to everyone who would hear. You figure you're probably not going to get reflexively hit by a kunai or exploding seal if she initially thinks you're him.

You pull the goggles over your head, but the scratched lens is impossible to see through, and considering that it's on your Sharingan side, you might need vision out of that eye. You pull the goggles all the way down to hang around your neck instead, and pull your hair out of the band. 

Once that's done, you climb along the branch and reach out to knock on the windows. They're heavily covered with seals; even though the blinds are made of paper, it feels like knocking your hand against something far more solid. You can feel Kushina inside; you're only barely good enough at chakra sense to qualify as a sensor, but it's always been hard to miss a jinchuuriki.

"...'nato?" comes Kushina's sleepy voice. "I thought I told you; you live here now, you can use the door instead of sneaking in the window like we're fifteen." She sounds increasingly awake as she talks, at least. By the end of the sentence, she's downright coherent.

"Sorry, Kushina-san," you call awkwardly through the window. "Sensei's not here."

There's a short intake of breath, and then silence. Then Uzumaki Kushina, sealing papers in one hand, kunai in the other, and an ink stain on her cheek, slams the window open. Her eyes are blazing, full of not only her own chakra, but the faintest hint of red bijuu. 

She's in her pajamas. You're glad you had your Sharingan active, because you want to remember forever the way her expression shifts from shocked anger, a storm ready to crash to earth, to something quiet and gentle.

"...Obito-kun?" she says, staring at you. "I - _how_?"

You rub behind your head, fingers getting caught in your too-long hair. It _still_ tastes like salt. "I'd love to explain," you say, "but Rin and Kakashi need you right now. Can you grab your sealing stuff?"

She stares for a long minute, and then says, "I can't leave the village. ANBU would have my head."

You give her a thumbs up. "Don't worry, no one will ever know," you say. 

She stares at you for another minute, before reaching up tucking the sealing paper in her hand behind her ear. She tries to tuck some of her hair back as well, but it immediately falls forward over her shoulder again.

"...Get the hell in here and let me hug you first, brat," she says, finally, and you are all too glad to jump from the branch into her bedroom.

The room is still hers, clean white walls with blue spirals around the top, just under the ceiling, and experimental seal papers tacked all over it. But there's touches of Minato-sensei in it too, a couple of hiraishin kunai pushed to the back of Kushina's massive desk, alongside a copy of your team photo and - your heart catches in your throat - an offering bowl with an Uchiha crest almost hidden as it wraps around to the underside.

That's all you get the chance to see before Kushina wraps her arms around your shoulders and squeezes the life out of you. All you can see is red hair and the edge of the papers tucked behind her ear.

"Obito," Kushina whispers. "You set a new record for being late, you know."

"Kakashi said I was right on time," you whisper back.

She laughs and releases you. There are tears in her eyes, which she wipes away, getting another stain of ink across her cheek. You think she's smeared some on your shoulders, too.

Then she takes a deep breath and claps her hands in front of her chest. "Right. Rin and Kakashi. You said they needed me?"

"A bunch of Kiri-nin made Rin into a really unstable jinchuuriki," you say. "We need you - fix the seal, or - " Suddenly unsure what Kushina could even do, you trip over your words and fall silent.

But that just lights a fire in Kushina's eyes, and she immediately starts grabbing scrolls and ink off the shelves next to her desk. "Where are they? I thought they weren't due back from that mission for another three days."

"I have a pocket dimension now?" you offer. She stops to look you in the eye, and you wilt a little. Even after Uchiha Madara and an octopus the size of the Hokage tower, an unimpressed Uzumaki Kushina somehow is the thing that makes you nervous. "It's something that happened with my Sharingan!" you protest. 

"Let me see," she says. You hesitate, and she smiles. "I had your aunt Mikoto on my genin team. I probably know the most about the Sharingan outside the Uchiha clan."

You nod, and activate your eye again. Kushina leans in to look at it closely, then goes still.

"Mangekyou," she breathes, closing her eyes. Then she nods to herself, and goes back to grabbing sealing supplies. "We'll talk about that later. Kakashi's too?"

"Y-yeah," you say. With her back to you, Kushina nods again, and shoves a last few papers into a shoulder bag, followed by a large canteen.

"Right," she says, putting her hands on her hips. "Let's go. Take me to those troublesome teammates of yours, Obito-kun."

You hold your hand out to her, and she takes it, and then you whirl away.

\----> Rin

Once Obito is gone, you let your shoulders slump, all the brave face you were putting on for him draining out of you. It's a miracle, a _miracle_ that he came back. You don't want him to remember you as afraid as you feel right now.

You don't want Kakashi to remember you that way, either, but Kakashi's already seen you that afraid. Seeing each other at your worst is a part of your relationship now, and has been ever since Obito (didn't die) (left) (was taken away from you).

(You have no doubt that if he could have returned to you sooner, he would have. There's not a force in the world that would keep Uchiha Obito away from his comrades.)

(Possibly literally, now.)

"Rin?"

You glance at Kakashi sidelong, put on a weak smile, and slide down until you're sitting beside his head, elbows propped on your knees. "I'm alright," you say.

Kakashi rolls his visible eye, but doesn't call you out on it. "...He doesn't hate us. For leaving him."

So that's what's bothering him. "He wouldn't be Obito if he did," you say. 

"He shouldn't have survived," Kakashi says. "How did he..."

"We'll make him explain when he gets back with Kushina-san," you say. "I've got a lot of questions for him, like where he got that new eye."

The eye that had been an empty socket when you last saw Obito was restored, but utterly inhuman. The pupil, unlike his natural eyes, was just enough different from the dark blue iris to be easily visible - and so it was incredibly obvious that it wasn't round, but instead a horizontal bar of black, which somehow stayed perfectly horizontal no matter how Obito's head tilted.

"And the freckles," Kakashi agrees. You don't manage to repress your giggle. "Which aren't actually freckles, by the way - they got bigger when I pointed them out."

"His chakra's changed," you say. "I'm not sure if that eye is a doujutsu or what, but his chakra is different all over, more waterlike. The Sharingan is the only thing that didn't change."

"More watery, huh?" Kakashi says. "You're one to talk."

You press your hand into the seal on your stomach again. "It feels different from Kushina's," you agree. "The Kyuubi's chakra feels like a wildfire." Angry, burning out of control.

It's the out of control part that you're scared of. You're one of the best medics Konoha has - even the head of the hospital admitted that he wouldn't have been able to transplant a doujutsu eye out in the field and have it stick as well as Kakashi's Sharingan has. The only issue with it is that he can't turn it off, which is apparently a common problem with transplants like his. But Kushina's always had problems with fine chakra control, which is why she uses seals to do it instead.

Are there medical sealing techniques? You've never heard of any, but with Uzushio gone, would anyone but Kushina even know they existed?

Those are the thoughts that occupy you as you and Kakashi lapse into silence. Even if you can't perform medical jutsu right now, your chakra flaring and weakening seemingly at random because of the creature new-sealed in your body, you can still sense well enough that Kakashi is exhausted and probably only clinging to consciousness out of pure stubbornness. Even if his reserves have grown a lot in the last year, he shouldn't have pushed it.

(That's your medical opinion. Your personal opinion, the one you keep locked up inside your skull, is that you envy him right now, for being able to record his memories of Obito's return without the risk of ever forgetting. You don't want to forget.)

You're half-meditating, half listening to Kakashi breathe, when you sense a disturbance in the empty chakra of this dimension. You look up to see Obito and Kushina appear - Kushina's in her pajamas with smears of ink on her face, and there's a matching smear on Obito's bare shoulder. He's wearing his goggles around his neck. 

Kushina takes a deep breath. "Okay. Obito told me a little of what's going on, so we don't have to repeat all that again. Rin-chan, I'll need to see that seal of yours. Kakashi - "

She looks him over, from scraggly silver hair to toe.

" - you stay _right there_ , young man. Obito-kun, here. You're in charge of dinner."

She fishes a scroll out of the laden bag over her shoulder, barely looking at it before shoving it into Obito's confused hands. He unrolls it enough to reveal the storage seals inside, and then nods, sitting next to Kakashi across from you and starting to unpack the contents.

You let out a breath you weren't conscious of holding, and peel off the outer layer of your top as Kushina sits next to you. It's still soaked through - so is the compression top underneath, ending just above the seal, but as comfortable as you might be with Kakashi, you're not _that_ comfortable.

(Obito... Well, Obito isn't wearing a shirt himself, but it's different for boys who have been declared killed in action for a year. You'll cut him some slack.)

Kushina hums, leaning forward to look at the seal on the upper part of your stomach. "This isn't the seal Kirigakure usually uses on their jinchuuriki," she says thoughtfully. "It's an older design - more like a shittier version of the one Mito-sama had for the Kyuubi before me."

"Can you fix it?" you ask, hesitantly.

"Sure, but it's going to take me an hour or two of brainstorming," she says. You let your shoulders relax, and Kushina smiles at you. "I take it it's not so loose that it's going to come apart by then."

You shake your head. "No. I think we've got about a day, but you're the expert."

"You're the expert on your own chakra," Kushina says firmly. "You're a gifted sensor and a medic. I'm just an overpowered Uzumaki who's good at scribbling." You blink, and you're met by a grin full of confidence. "Don't sweat," Kushina says. "Just let me copy this down and then you can... Hmmm, do you have a change of clothes on you?"

You shake your head. "They took my things when I was captured."

"Good thing I brought extra PJs," Kushina says. "You'd better not peek, boys."

Obito squeaks, "Kushina-san! I wouldn't!" and you can practically feel Kakashi rolling his eyes. 

"There's something else," you say. "I think it's a control seal, somewhere on my body, but I can't pick it out with all the foreign chakra. It made me throw myself in the path of Kakashi's Chidori - if Obito hadn't been there - "

Kushina nods. "We'll check for that afterwards. Whoever is controlling you can't get in here, right?" she says, looking over her shoulder at Obito.

"Right," he says, biting his thumb to unload the unrolled storage scroll in front of him. "I don't think anyone but me and Kakashi could."

Kushina hms quietly, pulling a blank scroll and ink out of her bag. "That's assuming both your eyes have the same power. It's not unheard of with the Mangekyou, but it'd be kind of unusual."

"Mangekyou?" you ask.

"It's an evolved form of the Sharingan," Kushina answers. "Most Uchiha don't ever awaken it, because it only responds to terrible emotional trauma. I think going from no Sharingan to Mangekyou in a year is some kind of record, especially in a _transplant_."

"Oh," you say quietly, glancing at the boys. Obito has gone still, holding a stack of bowls in his hands. Kakashi looks almost the same as he was, except that he's closed his visible eye.

Kushina looks at them as well, and smiles. "You kids are doing a great job holding up," she says. "'Koto would be proud of you, Obito. She didn't handle awakening her Mangekyou nearly as well."

Obito gulps air, putting the bowls down, and turns so that all you can see of him is his back. "I couldn't let Rin die," he says. "That's all. So it's fine."

"Uh-huh," Kushina says, clearly not convinced. She frowns, and then looks down at the blank scroll in front of her, starting to copy down the lines in the seal on your stomach. "You can break down later," she says. "Just make sure you _do_ let it all out, okay?"

"Okay," Obito says in a small voice.

"You too, Kakashi."

"Yes, Kushina-san," Kakashi answers, not opening his eye. "...I think I'm going to take a nap."

"Good plan," Kushina agrees, putting her brush to paper again.

\----

An hour or so later, you're dressed in Kushina's too-big spare pajamas, Obito has freed dishes and half a dozen takeout bags from the storage seal, and the two of you are shovelling gyoza, soup, and rice into your faces like you're starving.

(Then again, from how skinny he is, Obito might _be_ starving. You haven't trusted your chakra control enough for even diagnostic jutsu.)

The soup is even still warm. Kushina's storage seals are the work of a miracle, and you're going to fight someone to get your hands on a few.

"You actually look the part of an Uchiha now," you say to Obito between mouthfuls. "Minus the freckles."

"They're not..." He sighs, pops another gyoza into his mouth, and swallows it whole. "I always cut my hair so short because I _didn't_ want to look like the other Uchiha."

"I figured," you say. "It doesn't look bad, though. Could use some tidying up, but it kind of adds to the whole... wild thing you have going on now."

"What, the ran through miles of woods with only a pair of stolen pants thing?" he says.

You giggle. "I meant your new eye. It's totally un-Uchiha-like, though."

Obito pauses, and presses his fingertips to his cheek just below the eye in question. "I haven't even seen it," he admits.

You hum, and lean to look past him. "Kushina-san? Do you have a mirror with you?" 

"Front left pocket-inside-a-pocket," she answers without looking up. You get up, grab the compact mirror out of the indicated pocket, and hand it to Obito before you sit back down. He clicks it open, and you skim along the storage scroll until you find a seal labelled 'tea stuff' in Kushina's handwriting.

Better to give Obito a quiet minute to look at himself, even if you can't give him privacy. And tea helps everything. The large thermos that appears when you activate the seal is warm to the touch, the liquid inside probably on the edge of hot. When you open it up, steam scented with strong-brewed black tea escapes.

You pour into one of the mugs that appeared and nudge Obito with it. "Here. Drink."

"Thanks," he says, setting the mirror down to the side. "You're a dirty liar, Rin. My hair looks awful."

You open your mouth to respond, and chakra suddenly churns your stomach, as the tailed beast sealed inside you thrashes at the weakening seal. You manage to not tip the thermos of tea over, but it's a near thing. If the ground wasn't so perfectly flat, you're certain your haste to put it down would have knocked it over.

Your other hand presses into your stomach. It's not painful, exactly, but it feels like it should be, as the chakra rushes over you like a crushing wave and then abates. You keep your breathing regulated for a moment after it passes, until you're sure it's gone.

Obito squeezes your shoulder.

"I'm okay," you insist.

"Still a liar," he replies, voice quieter, more serious. 

You sigh, and don't argue. "So, your eye?"

"I'll tell you guys when Kakashi is awake," Obito replies. He leans forward and fills the other mug with tea, pressing it into your hands. You wrap your fingers around it gratefully, and listen for a little while to the sounds of breathing and Kushina grumbling into her brushstrokes.

It's not even great tea. Kushina is an excellent cook, but she doesn't have the patience for a perfect cup, and Minato-sensei is worse. The tea in your hands is a little bitter and oversteeped, but it tastes like home.

"Done!" Kushina proclaims, when you're about halfway through the cup and it's starting to grow cold. You hear her flop over onto her back behind you, and turn to see her hand with the ink brush, still extended, flop onto the ground next to her. "Not my best work, but good enough to do in a pinch, and a pinch is what we're in, you know?"

"I'm sure it'll work," you say.

"Of course it'll work," Kushina says, sitting up and pushing her hair away from her face. "Question is more 'how long.' Don't get me wrong, it'll last a lot longer than what you've got, but a patch job is a patch job, and it can't fix the problems with the main seal." She sighs, clearly aggravated. "All I can do right now is make it hold together longer and better. I don't know if it's possible to make you into a stable jinchuuriki - you're probably going to need another one of these every couple years."

You smile weakly. "So what you're saying is, I have to manage it like any other chronic health condition?"

"Trust a medic to think of it like that," Kushina replies. "Get over here so I can put it on you. Obito, I need you for spotting - they had a Hyuuga on hand when they did mine, but Sharingan should work fine."

"Sure," Obito says, putting down his almost empty mug. "But, what am I looking for?"

"Just to make sure that the bijuu chakra doesn't go haywire while I'm applying the second seal," Kushina says. "Rin, you said it was the Sanbi? How do you know that?"

You look down into your mug. "... I saw it," you finally say. "When I was unconscious. It was like... this giant island, with a lagoon, and in the middle of the lagoon was a cage, and in the cage was the Sanbi. It looked like a turtle, but I definitely saw three tails."

Kushina sighs. "Good enough for me. Last I knew, Kiri lost track of the Sanbi after its last jinchuuriki died." She looks at her sealing scrolls and frowns. "That's not common knowledge, though."

"Do you know what happened to them?" you ask. 

Kushina's expression grows hard. "They were part of the force Kirigakure used to destroy Uzushio. Both Kiri's jinchuuriki were used in the attack, but the Sanbi's jinchuuriki was killed by the defenders."

You've never heard her talk about it before. You glance at Obito, but his face is the same mixture of surprise and sympathy that you're feeling. Both of you stay silent, not sure how to address the matter of Kushina's lost birth village. According to what you'd heard, the entire village had been wiped out, so you don't even know how Kushina could know the events of the battle in such detail.

(It makes sense, though. To wipe an entire village off the map... What could do that except for a jinchuuriki?)

"Anyway!" Kushina says with what must be as much cheer as she can muster. She claps her hands together. "We've got a seal to fix, so get over here."

You obediently go over, find a place not covered in scribbly scrolls, and sit. Kushina gestures for you to lay down, instead.

"Relax your stomach as much as you can," she says. "Ink's gonna be cold, but try not to flinch. Obito?"

You glance at him, and the red of the Sharingan is visible under the too-long bangs hanging in his eyes. He gives you a thumbs up before sitting next to Kushina.

"Deep breath," Kushina says, leaning over you and smiling. "And, here we go."

You focus on your breathing, instead of the way the cold ink feels as Kushina paints modifications onto your stomach. Every so often, she pauses to sink the ink into your skin with a tingle of chakra, warm and flickering. You think you remember her telling you once that she had a fire nature, a rarity among the water-inclined Uzumaki. You wonder if that's why she was considered compatible with the Kyuubi.

Your own nature is water, but it feels weak and thready in comparison, like a tiny stream flowing into the ocean. When a tsunami climbs up the land, it goes up streams and rivers further than anywhere else, and that kind of destructive backflow is how the Sanbi's chakra feels every time it activates inside your body.

You try to meditate while Kushina works, and it helps to some extent. Your breathing, your chakra, the chakra of the creature inside you, the strokes of the brush... Steadily, it feels less like you're the container for a tempest in a bottle and more like the rolling waves of the ocean. You've only seen the sea once, on a mission Minato-sensei led your team on before you were all called to war, so you remember better the sound of crashing waves than you do the sight.

You close your eyes, and see the edge of the lagoon again, but before it comes into focus, you fall asleep.


	3. Miniature Disasters III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where one problem is sealed away, another appears.
> 
> (Or: the care and keeping of traumatized Kakashis.)

\----> Kushina

When you're about halfway done with the seal, Rin closes her eyes, and before long, her controlled-even breathing settles out into the naturally-even breaths of sleep. You sigh quietly, but otherwise don't shift your focus from the ink and skin under your fingers and the job you still have to finish.

When you're finally done, you sit back on your heels, stretching your back from being hunched over. You press your hands onto the seal one more time, chakra dancing between your fingers to activate the seal, and then give Obito a thumbs up.

"All done with that," you say. "Let's take a break, huh? I bet you could use a nap, too."

"I'm fine," he says, glancing at Rin and then Kakashi.

"Bull," you say. "You've used your shiny new eye a bunch already today, and used the regular Sharingan a shitload too." Not that you can really blame him. If he didn't want to remember every moment he could with his teammates, he wouldn't be Obito.

Kami, what are you going to tell Mikoto? You don't even have the story out of him yet and you're already terrified of her reaction to 'your lost nephew came back with a full Mangekyou.' 

Not because she'll be angry. No, you know how to handle Uchiha Mikoto when she's angry. She's going to _cry_ , and you don't know what to do when Mikoto cries, lets go of that Uchiha composure and lets herself get lost in the emotions. You remember joking with her once that Obito cried enough for the entire clan. The truth is just that Mikoto never loses her composure over bad things, grief and loss or frustration or fear. She didn't cry when you brought her news of Obito's death - she just buckled down, ready to fight every person in her clan to protect his last bequest, and you don't know if Kakashi even knows how close he came to going back to being one-eyed.

No, Mikoto only cries for happiness and relief, and this is so much of both. Even if it's with the Mangekyou and all the witnessed horror that implies, Obito came home.

What are you going to tell _Minato_?

"But - " Obito starts to protest.

"No buts," you say. "Don't make me pull the Back-Up Sensei card."

(And how much does _that_ hurt, that Minato named you to take care of his students in his will? That two of his three students have no one else, Rin's parents dead in the war and Kakashi's dead before, and the last one is now doomed to remain with the clan that made him a black sheep among black sheep?)

(If Obito hadn't manifested the Sharingan, they might have let him marry out, escape the family name and the laws binding the Uchiha as a clan. With Mangekyou, they'll never let him go.)

Obito wilts under your stare. Sharingan and his strange new eye have nothing on your intimidation factor, apparently. "Okay, Kushina-san."

He even obligingly lays down, between Rin and Kakashi. You don't trust that he's asleep, though, until he rolls onto his side and curls up, the way he's always done.

As you watch his breathing settle out, you notice that in addition to the weird eye and the freckly skin all over the arm and side Rin said had been crushed, little flaps of skin under his rib cage and behind his ears flutter with each breath. 

You stare, until your eyes start to hurt, and then shake the thoughts free of your head.

"'Koto, your nephew came back from the dead and he's got fucking _gills_. You owe me so much sake right now."

\----> Kakashi

When you wake, your internal clock says that it's been much more than the hour or so you intended to nap. You open your eye to look at the sky for confirmation, only to be met with the unchanging red-grey mist of Obito's sanctuary.

To say that everything comes back in a rush would be a lie. Everything that happened was always there, in the forefront of your mind. You just didn't let yourself believe it was real until you were met with that reality.

You sit up. At least it's obvious why no one woke you; Obito and Rin are asleep, and Kushina seems to be meditating in the center of a group of scrolls, rolled up and arranged into something resembling neat piles. She doesn't react as you get up, and you're not even trying to be quiet.

Rin's covered by an extra pajama top that must be Kushina's, thrown over her shoulders. There's a blanket over Obito, who is curled up on his side and almost completely hidden under it. There's just the ink-black of Uchiha hair peeking out, and his fingers curling around one edge.

There's also a few containers of takeout food sitting around. You help yourself to cold soup, mildly dried out rice, and the last few gyoza with your back to Kushina and your feet dangling over the edge of the boxlike landscape feature you're all on. Any meal that isn't ration bars is a good meal, and a meal where you don't have to navigate the dance of yanking your mask back over your face between bites is an even better one.

(It's not like you really care that much, at this point. Everyone here except Obito has seen you without it, and the only reason he hasn't is because he wasn't there for the process of your recovery from the eye injury and transplant. It's more a point of pride now.)

You keep your awareness on the group behind you, so you hear when Obito makes a complaining noise in his sleep - exactly the sort of thing that would alert enemy ninja to your hiding place if there were any - and then, a few minutes later, Kushina standing and moving a scroll aside before coming your way. You drain the last of the soup container and pull your mask back up before she reaches you.

"How are they?" you ask.

Kushina sits next to you, with her feet dangling as well. "They're holding together," she says. "We fixed Rin's seal while you were out, and then I made Obito go to sleep. Rin fell asleep while I was working."

You sigh through your mask, and set the empty soup container aside. Kushina reaches around you and grabs the container of gyoza, making a disappointed sound when she sees there are only two left.

"Look at you," she says, plucking one out with her fingers. "Somewhere down the line, you turned into a responsible team leader, Kakashi."

Reflexively, you reach up towards your Sharingan. It's a tell you've developed these last few months that you know you should get rid of, but you couldn't bring yourself to do so. Maybe now you can, now that you know he's okay.

(The you before the bridge would have been angry, that all that grieving you did was for nothing. Angry at Obito for not coming back sooner, for not really being dead.)

(The you right now knows that it wasn't for nothing. If nothing else, it made you painfully aware of the fact that you could kill everything but the part of you that _cares_.)

"I'm not," you say. "It was Obito. If he hadn't been there - " You look down at your hand, still with blood under your armguard and in your cuticles. " - if he hadn't gotten there, this hand would have gone through Rin instead."

"That's what teammates are for," Kushina says. "Maybe not to that extreme extent, but your life's always been extreme, you know?"

You continue to stare at your hand, until Kushina reaches over and wraps hers around it. There's gyoza sauce on her fingertips. 

"You're still only human, Kakashi-kun."

"I know," you say. Kushina waits for you to say more, which you don't, and then sighs with agitation.

"Stubborn brats, the lot of you," she says. "I'm going to wake those two up, and then we're going to figure out that command seal on Rin and also make Obito tell us just what the _fuck_ actually happened to him."

"I can help," you start to say.

"Your job is putting the trash back in the sealing scroll," Kushina says. "I don't trust that it's going to last, but we're going to set a good example and not fill Obito's dimension with junk before he gets a chance to."

You don't laugh, but you do smile as you take the empty gyoza container from her, cram the empty soup container into it, and seal the whole thing back in the scroll laid out by a thermos of cold tea and a pair of mugs. You gulp down the tea in one of the mugs. (Kushina must have brewed it; it's too close to what a cup of tea is supposed to be like to be Minato-sensei's.) Then you seal those up, too.

You hear Obito whine, and look over. Kushina attempts to yank his blanket away, but he has a death grip on the edge of it, and it starts to tear before Kushina lets go of it, before reaching out and pushing his shoulder with her foot, knocking him onto his back. The noise prompts Rin into waking, sitting up and straightening her top before rubbing at her eyes.

"Come on, you layabouts, time to get up," she says. "I stayed up all night brainstorming on Rin's command seal, and someone's going to notice that I'm missing eventually."

"Ugh," Obito grumbles, before yanking the blanket back out of Kushina's hands and wrapping it around his bare shoulders. "Breakfast?"

"You ate all my gyoza!"

"I'm a growing boy! And that's only the second time I've eaten in the last six months at least!"

"That..." Kushina pauses in the middle of her building temper. "That is _not_ comforting, Obito-kun. You have _so much_ explaining to do."

You skim through the scroll, find a storage seal labelled 'yakitori,' and unseal it, immediately walking over and dropping the bag in Obito's lap. "Here. Now quit complaining."

Kushina gives you a haughty look. "Quit eating my emergency rations, you know?"

Rin catches your eye, rolls hers, and scoots over to look into the bag. "Maybe you shouldn't have such delicious rations, Kushina-san," she says, feigning meekness before snatching a skewer from right under Obito's nose. "Thanks for the food."

(You can't entirely blame her. It smelled delicious from the moment you opened the seal, a hell of a lot better than cold soup.)

"Thanks for the food," Obito agrees, before aggressively stripping the meat off his own skewer. 

Kushina sighs, before sitting next to them and taking a skewer of her own. "Just don't get sauce on my blanket. Come on, Kakashi, sit down and get some before it's all gone."

It's _almost_ like the old team dinners. You ignore how your heart and eye ache at the thought and go through the usual routine of eating around your mask, careful to not get any of the sauce on the inside where it will ruin your sense of smell for hours. Somehow, three large orders of yakitori disappear faster than you would have thought possible. 

When it's all gone, Kushina says, "Okay, let's get down to business and hope that maybe I won't be late to lunch with Mikoto and Itachi-kun. Rin, do you have any idea where that command seal is?"

Rin pauses. "My chest felt like it was burning," she says hesitantly. "Not like the Sanbi's chakra was, but something else."

"Ugh," Kushina says. "It's probably a heart seal, then. You're going to have to take your top off so I can see."

"...Right," Rin says. She sets her collection of skewers in the garbage pile and starts peeling her shirt off.

"It's only fair," Obito says, shrugging his blanket further over his shoulders. "Kakashi should have to take his off, too."

"Not a chance," you say blandly.

"If you boys wanted to be helpful, you could turn on those Sharingans," Kushina says. "You should be able to see the command seal, now that the Sanbi's chakra is more under control."

Your eye tingles faintly even before you uncover it, probably in response to Obito activating his. You don't glance at him, instead focusing on what you can see of Rin's chakra system. The Sharingan isn't as good at seeing chakra as the Byakugan, but you can make out enough to see the raging chakra from before is now concentrated in Rin's stomach, and there's a hazy shape over her heart.

"See it?"

"Yeah," Obito says, and you nod agreement.

"Good," Kushina says. She holds her hand over Rin's chest, and there's a hint of chakra around her fingers. Slowly, the foreign chakra clarifies into a black ink seal. Kushina studies it, and her eyes narrow.

"Good thing you managed to trigger its activation," she says. "This isn't a garden variety command seal - it's a growing slave seal. The longer it sits, the harder it is to get off, because it integrates with your natural chakra pathways."

"But you can take it off, right?" Obito asks.

"Of course," Kushina says. "You can turn those eyes off if you want; this won't take nearly as long as the jinchuuriki seal. First rule of sealing: taking something apart is easier than fixing it."

You consider, but opt not to cover your Sharingan again. Your chakra reserves feel much better, good enough to last a few minutes of light use like this.

And so you watch as Kushina makes a thin thread of her own chakra, shaped something like a crochet hook, and threads it carefully into the seal on Rin's chest. She wiggles it around, then inserts it from another angle and does the same thing. The third time, she wiggles the whole thing apart, and ink slides down Rin's chest to drip on her stomach.

"Done," Kushina says. "See, not bad at all."

You slide your eyes closed, relaxing your shoulders as the drain on your chakra dissipates. By the time you've re-covered your Sharingan, you've heard Rin pulling her shirt back on.

"How do you feel?" Obito asks. You open his eyes to see that his gaze is fixed on Rin, Sharingan eye back to normal Uchiha-black but the strange new one looking as uncanny as before.

"Better," Rin says hesitantly. "My chakra still feels strange, but I think that's just my new normal."

"Which means it's your turn," Kushina says. "This had better be one hell of a story, Obito."

\----

It is one hell of a story.

The first part is unbelievable enough, with the mention of white people, fake limbs, and _Madara Uchiha_. That last is enough to startle Kushina into leaking Kyuubi chakra, and she looks as spooked by the flicker of red as the three of you are.

"It's never reacted _that_ strongly to something before," she says, looking down at her stomach, where her own seal is just visible in the gap between her PJ top and bottoms before it, and the sensation of burning chakra, fade away.

"Does it... listen?" Rin asks, clearly concerned.

"Usually it sleeps," Kushina says. "I think it's awake now because there's another bijuu so close by. I've never been around another jinchuuriki, so I couldn't say for sure." She looks up, and gives Rin a weak smile. "Don't worry. Yours will probably sleep for a while until it gets used to the seal."

"I hope so," Rin says.

Obito's story gets a bit more disjointed after that - reverse summoning himself into an octopus den, going into some sort of coma inside an egg. You guess that would explain why it took him so long to come back, and why all his scars - not just the injuries from being crushed, but all the little, stupid training scars as well - have disappeared. He finishes with an explanation of how he escaped the cave that turns into a demonstration of him completely painlessly popping one of his shoulders out of and back into its socket.

"I'm running diagnostics on you," Rin says. "Even if my chakra control isn't good enough for healing jutsu right now, I want to do at least that much."

"...Okay," Obito says, retreating slightly under the blanket still around his shoulders. "It doesn't feel like anything is wrong, though."

"By your own admission, you grew _gills_ , a new arm, and a new eyeball," Rin says. "I just want to check for any more surprises."

You think that it's her way of making sure that this is all real, personally. You can't hold that against her, and it seems like Obito can't either, placidly allowing her to put chakra-swathed hands on either side of his head.

"Look on the bright side," Kushina says. "Now all of your excuses for being late will sound totally believable, you know?"

"Very funny, Kushina-san," Obito replies, his expression veering dangerously close to a pout.

Rin's face twists. She moves her hands further down, over Obito's back. "...Kakashi?"

"What is it?" you say, her tone alone enough to put you instantly on alert.

"Can you look Obito over with your Sharingan, and tell me if you see the same thing I'm feeling?"

You uncover your eye immediately, and look Obito over anew, disregarding the chakra it costs you to look deeper than surface-level memorization.

Immediately, you see it. A blot of foreign chakra, over Obito's heart. Not quite the same as Rin's, but it looks like it started the same, and has just had more time to spread out.

"I see it," you say.

Rin grimaces. "Kushina-san? Obito has the same slave seal I did, and I think it's been on there a lot longer."

Obito pales. Kushina swears, and comes closer, pushing Obito's shoulder until he's leaning back and she can push the blanker off his chest. Sure enough, the mark immediately appears.

"Yeah, that's the same one," she says. "It's been on there a while, so it's gotten pretty deep. I think your whole rebirth as a half-octopus thing accelerated the integration with your chakra system."

Obito looks down at his chest, then looks back up, closing his eyes. "How do we get it off?" he says.

Kushina withdraws her hand. "You want the nice answer, or the honest one?"

"I'm a shinobi," Obito says immediately. "Give me the honest one."

"Good kid." Kushina sighs, reaches up and tucks some of her hair behind one ear. "We're going to have to kill you a little bit," she says. "Start and stop your heart in order to get it off. Really, we should take you in to the hospital to do it - they've got the right equipment."

"I don't know if the hospital will be able to help that much," Rin says.

"What? Why?" Obito asks.

You catch Rin's eye again, nod, and then close your Sharingan off. The strangeness under the surface disappears, and it's just Obito, still a complete mess, with a half-faded seal on his chest.

"Put one hand over your heart, and find your pulse," you say. "Then put the other over one of the gill slits on your side."

Obito does so, watching you the whole time, and Kushina nudges his hand aside so she can feel his heartbeat as well. Then they each reach for one of Obito's sides.

Kushina figures it out first. "Ohhhhh, that's _weird_ ," she says. 

"What the hell?" Obito says quietly. He lifts his hand from his chest, pushing Kushina's hand on his side away to press both his hands over the gill slits. The ones behind his ears flare, and the dark spots on his skin suddenly vanish, replaced (covered?) by almost reflective white patches.

"You have three hearts," Rin says. "Only the... primary heart, I guess, has the seal. I'm still trying to track what that means for your circulation, so try not to freak out."

"Easy for you to say," Obito mutters, but he takes the deep breath of someone intentionally regulating their breathing.

"If they're the same seal, then does that mean the same person is responsible?" you ask, looking at Kushina.

She frowns but nods, sitting back on her heels. "It's likely. And if the person who 'saved' Obito -" She uses her finger quotes expressively. "- really is Uchiha Madara, then that would explain why Rin's seal is the old Uzumaki style. Probably Sharinganed it off Mito-sama herself."

"Can the Sharingan copy seals?" you ask.

"If you see them drawn," Kushina clarifies. "Doesn't teach you how to make them, though. Old bastard must have done his homework, if that slave seal is his work as well."

You nod. You're familiar with the basics of storage seals - most shinobi are, at least in Konoha - but anything of the level of complexity required to affect someone's mind is far beyond you.

(You don't admit it out loud, but you're curious, now. Since Obito gave you his Sharingan, it's become apparent that normal ninjutsu won't hold a challenge for you much longer. Only your chakra reserves limit you right now. The thought of something that you can't just master through copying the way you've been adding jutsu to your options the last few months piques your interest.)

"Okay, done," Rin says, withdrawing her hands from Obito's back and shaking them out slightly as the chakra fades away. "The supplementary hearts are on the pulmonary circuit, which isn't ideal, but they're on a separate set of nerves from the primary heart. Other than that, there's a huge amount of neural development that's well above my ability to sort out, a lot of changes in muscular structure, and the gills. You have some new glands under your tongue, but I can't tell if they're for venom, ink, or something else. There's a lot of chakra system development around the new eye as well, but I don't know if that's new or normal for an Uchiha with an awakened Sharingan."

She pauses, and grimaces. "Other than the seal, I didn't find anything that looks _wrong_ , but I don't exactly have precedent to work with. I'd feel better if a professional looked at it, but..."

"There's not any professionals who are going to be familiar with what to look for," Kushina says. "Okay. More important questions. Can we stop his heart long enough to disrupt the seal without killing him?"

"It should be possible," Rin says. "With the secondary hearts to pick up the slack, we probably have a full three minutes to work, instead of the usual two."

And then she looks at you and says, "Kakashi, you'll have to be the one to do it," and the world seems to shake, slowing down (speeding up) in a way that has nothing to do with the Sharingan.

(Your hand is still covered in blood.)

"What?" you say, voice breaking and too-weak.

"Lightning chakra is the best way to start and stop someone's heart," Rin says. "With my control like it is right now, I don't trust myself to try. Not... Not with Obito."

"Rin, it's fine - " Obito starts to say, but you cut him off.

"I can't."

You (didn't, but should have, should have, should have) killed Rin with lightning, with electricity between your fingers and wrapping around your wrist like it belonged there. You just got Obito _back_. You can't.

You'll kill him.

(Lightning burns through the body from the inside out. That's how you feel right now, everything electric and vibrating and trying to escape your nerves.)

"I can't," you repeat, and then before anyone can respond, you leap from the edge of the dimensional feature, chakra poured into your legs to propel you across the gap to another. And then to another, and another, off into the endless shadows until you almost can't feel their chakra anymore.

You can't. 

(The Sharingan burns, as Obito calls your name and moves to follow you, only to be stopped by Kushina stepping between you.)

You can't have his death be your fault. Not again.

\----

It's a couple of hours later, you think, that Obito comes to find you. You don't feel him coming; he just steps into existence next to you. You're sitting with your feet dangling again, and he just crouches at your side before swinging his feet over the edge as well. He's still wearing Kushina's blanket.

(You suppose it makes sense, that if he can come and go anywhere outside of the dimension, that he could appear wherever he wants _inside_ it as well.)

You don't say anything. Fortunately, it's Obito, so he takes your silence and runs with it.

"I took Kushina-san home for now, so she could change and keep her lunch appointment and stuff," he says. "And then I snuck into Rin's place to get her some clean clothes. I can go get some for you if you want. You still live in the same place, right?"

You think of the little dinky shinobi apartment you moved into when your father died. You've never let Obito inside it before. The idea of him there without you, grabbing your things, is too surreal to bear.

"I don't need anything," you say.

"You need a _shower_ ," Obito says, elbowing you. You don't respond to his jostling. "Kushina-san wants us to stay in here as much as we can for now, but we can at least grab a few things. She promised to have Ichiraku for us when I go back to get her tonight."

That's almost enough to make you feel less dead inside. "Is she telling Sensei?" you ask.

"He's not due back from his mission for another three days," Obito says. "But even if he was... She's not planning to tell anyone, just in case..."

In case something goes wrong with removing the seal. You hear it as loud as the silence of this dimension. No sound, no smell, nothing to prove that people were ever here.

"And what if something goes wrong while we're all in here?" you ask. You mean it to be harsh, but it comes out quieter than you intended. "How are we supposed to get out?"

"You'll still be here," Obito says, with complete confidence. You turn your face away, so that you don't have to see him even out of the corner of your eye. "...Look, Kakashi. Look at me."

You don't. Not until Obito reaches out with one hand - the hand that's still from his original body, though from what Rin was saying that doesn't matter very much - and pulls your chin in his direction. You don't resist as he turns your head towards him, and pushes your headband up to reveal your Sharingan.

You see him, in every detail, knowing that whatever he's going to say is going to blaze itself on the inside of your eyelids forever. But you don't have it in you to resist, to close your eye and block him out, force his words into the mundane memories that will fade and hurt less with time.

"All I cared about was getting back to you and Rin," Obito says. There's something fierce in his mismatched eyes, more captivating somehow than if he had the Sharingan active. "The thing that kept me going was _seeing you again_. And you know what?

"I did it. I'm here with you now. I was almost too late, and that's because of the same damn seal that's on me right now. I can't stand the thought of it. Because if it makes me do something, if it makes me see you or Rin hurt and... walk away, or something like that, it'd be worse than getting crushed by that rock. If my life was the price of saving you, you _already know_ I'd pay it without hesitation."

Slowly, Obito withdraws his hand from your cheek. You stay frozen in the same position, unable to look away from him.

"We shouldn't have left you." The words fall out of your mouth, and you're not even conscious of them until Obito narrows his eyes.

"You shouldn't have left me," he agrees. "But if you hadn't, I don't think I would have lived. Fucked up how that works, huh?"

You just nod, once. It's beyond fucked up. Uchiha Madara... He must have wanted someone from his own clan, for whatever purpose he had in mind. Obito, broken and dying, was probably the first chance he had to get to an Uchiha outside of Konoha's walls who was still alive.

Obito lived, _because_ you left him.

"If you want to make it up to me," Obito says, and there's something more dangerous in his eyes now, more violent in the Uchiha black, more alien in the horizontal pupil, "then help me. That way..."

He takes a deep breath. "Even if I do die, I won't die alone. I'll die surrounded by you, and Rin, and Kushina-san. I'll die somewhere safe, with a belly full of Ichiraku ramen, and it'll be _quick_. I'm happy with that. Can you do that for me?"

It's his choice.

Just like giving you his eye was his choice.

You close your eyes and slump forward, letting the tears come. Even if it's only a few, you don't think you could stop them now.

(Did you ever cry for him, after the pain in your eye socket finally subsided and the world stopped being painted in red? You don't remember.)

"I can do it," you say. "For you."

How could you say otherwise? How could you do anything else, when he puts it to you like that? If it will make up for (letting him die) ( _abandoning_ him to die, alone and in pain) being worse than trash, how can you say no?


	4. Miniature Disasters IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kushina leaves the kids to sort themselves out while she goes on a lunch date with her best friend.
> 
> (Or: Uzumaki Kushina would like for things to stop happening So Much, for maybe like, _one_ day.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that going forward, tags will be updated based upon the previous chapter, to avoid spoiling people for the new update. Also please note that I am bad at honorifics and jutsu names and so I use them erratically as only a native English speaker can. (I spend all my naming things energy on characters.)

\----> Kushina

It feels like it should still be too early to be called morning when Obito returns you to your bedroom. You leave your sealing supplies and scrolls there, so that the kids have something to eat, and tell him to keep the blanket.

"Bring Kakashi and Rin here to shower when you all feel up to it," you say. "Yourself, too, before we find out if you stink like octopus when you get gross."

"I will," he promises. That's Obito - so earnest when it comes to his teammates that teasing goes right over his head. "Kushina-san?"

"Yeah?"

"Please don't tell anyone," he says quietly. "Until we get the seal off. If... If something goes wrong, I don't want anyone getting their hopes up."

It's the mature, rational thing to say. Obito might not be alive tomorrow, especially if Kakashi doesn't get his act together enough to help. Rin's chakra control isn't coming back any time soon (maybe not ever), and yours has always been shit at delicate work, even before the Kyuubi, and lightning's not your element anyway.

It also hurts like a _bitch_ to hear. You refrain from hugging him, and instead ruffle his stupid long, fluffy Uchiha locks. "You got it."

"Thank you," he says, formally and sincerely. You can't stand it.

"Get out of here," you say. "I'm going to try and catch a couple of hours before I have to meet Mikoto. You kids kept me up all night."

Obito gives you a weak smile, and vanishes. Once he's out of sight, it's like he was never there, except for the sealing supplies and other odds and ends missing from your desk.

You stare for too long at the offering bowl you and Minato set up for him. You debate lighting some incense. It might not be quite the prayers the bowl was intended for, but surely it wouldn't _hurt_ , right?

In the end, though, you're too tired to even dig the incense out, and flop into your bed, dead to the world before you can even pull the blankets over you.

\----

You awake to the annoying wheeze of the frog alarm clock Jiraiya gave Minato as a birthday present a few years ago, and smack your hand into it, hard, to shut it up. Then you sit up and do your best to get ready to meet Mikoto without thinking about the night you had.

That's how you deal with things like this, when you can't take the risk of showing them. Just pretend they aren't real. 

(After all, if it weren't for the missing sealing supplies, there wouldn't be any proof that last night wasn't a dream you had at your desk before you finally stumbled into bed. You've always been prone to weird dreams when you sleep sitting up.)

By the time Mikoto knocks at your door, you're mostly put-together, able to yell "Coming!" at the door just as you finish brushing out your hair.

Of course, you couldn't hope to get one over on Mikoto. Even without her Sharingan, she's always been able to see right through you. One Uchiha micro-expression is enough to let you know that she's laughing at you inside.

"Did you stay up all night again?" she asks, and you huff, folding your arms.

"I had an important sealing project," you say. Mikoto fails to look convinced, and eventually you relent, "...Kept thinking about Uzushio last night. More than I have in a while."

(It's not _untrue_. You haven't seen another Uzumaki seal, even a copied one, in years. Of course that would bring back memories.)

Mikoto tips her head to the side just a hair, accepting this, which is good, because you don't have any other excuses cooked up. "It makes sense, with the war ending," she says. 

"War's not over until it's over," you say, sliding your feet into your shoes. "Kakashi and Rin are still on a mission."

"And when it is over, will you go?" Mikoto asks.

You pull the door you your house closed behind you, perhaps a little sharply, and lock the door. You don't bother to activate the trap seals on it, for only the second time in years. (The first was that painful, hectic day when you moved Minato in, Rin too-cheerfully helping to carry boxes and Kakashi almost blankly following after her, as you and Minato tried to impress on their grief that life continues on. Rin, at least, looked a little better by the actual wedding.)

"If Konoha would let me?" you say. "In a _heartbeat_." You start to walk down the path to the road. 

Truth be told, Konoha wouldn't be able to actually stop you, if you decided to go to Uzushio. You'd just have to deal with becoming a missing-nin afterwards. 

(If Minato and the kids came with you, it'd be almost worth it. The biggest thing you'd miss would be Mikoto. But Minato has too much of himself poured into Konoha to ever leave, and you've been pretty sure for a while that he and Rin are the only things keeping Kakashi going.)

(Well, until last night, you think-but-don't-think.)

"No Itachi-kun today?" you say, changing the subject.

"I left him with Sumi-san," Mikoto says. "I think it does her good, having another boy to look after."

You allow yourself the wince. Obito's grandmother had fallen ill not long after his death, her lungs fighting to get the better of her in the cold winter, until Mikoto reached out to her and set her on Itachi babysitting duty. Then life had roared back into the old woman with every bit of the tenacity the Uchiha were known for.

(Obito takes after her more than he realizes.)

"I'm glad," you say. "I've told Kakashi she wants to meet with him, but he won't have any of it."

Mikoto sighs. "He's so stubborn. Learning the Sharingan from one of us instead of trying to browbeat it through trial and error would save him so much headache."

"Literally," you say, "but that's Kakashi for you. Ichiraku?"

Mikoto pauses in her graceful steps, and then finally allows herself to smile genuinely, without the burdens of her clan. "Why did I expect anything else?"

\----

"You guys still do to-go orders, right?" you ask as you sit down. Mikoto, now firmly out of her Uchiha-head's-wife persona, elbows you in the ribs.

"Going to abandon me that quickly, are you?"

"I was just making sure!" you say, spinning on the stool to face her. "I'm not going anywhere, you know? You promised me important news!"

"And I somehow hoped that would mean you picking something slightly more formal than a ramen shop, but you've dashed my hopes as usual," Mikoto says, smile fond.

"'Koto, we come here every time it's my turn to pick," you say. "Minato proposed to me here."

"Because you're both disasters," she replies. "Fugaku proposed to me when he was in the hospital and delirious from pain medication, like a proper gentleman."

You laugh. "I thought your marriage was arranged!"

"It was," Mikoto says. "But that's no reason not to do things properly."

You continue to laugh until your ramen is served. You'll come back for your takeout order later, when Mikoto isn't around to notice you making an order for two kids who are supposed to be on a mission for two more days and her dead nephew.

(Okay, _technically_ Obito is her great-aunt's grandson, but she always called him her nephew and he never objected to it. 'Cousin' is a strange word in the Uchiha family, sometimes used as much to create distance as to close it.)

Because Mikoto is actually a terrible person under the Uchiha mask, far worse than you, she waits until you're putting a narutomaki in your face to say, "We decided to have another child." Just as she no doubt intended, you choke, and thump your fist (gently) on the bar as you clear your throat.

"Already?" you say. "I thought you and Fugaku agreed to wait until the war was over."

"It's ending," Mikoto says. "Kumo and Suna have already signed onto the treaty, as have some of the minor villages. It's down to Kiri now."

Both of you know that Iwa won't sign until all the other major villages have. The Tsuchikage is a stubborn bastard even among Iwa-nin.

You gulp down water and wipe your mouth. "I guess Itachi-kun's getting old enough that you don't need to watch him as much," you say.

"He is," Mikoto agrees. Her expression is distant. "The elders are pushing him to beat Kakashi-kun's records."

You glare into your water. Another reason to want the war to end. Itachi is a prodigy, no doubt, but how much of that is because he's been pushed so hard by clan elders?

If the war ends, then it won't matter how early he graduates. Mikoto will be able to keep her eldest son off the front lines if there aren't front lines to put him on, and raise a second child without the burden of war.

(You hate Kirigakure for what they did to your clan, your village, at the beginning of this war. They _entered_ the war by wiping Uzushio off the map. But you don't hate them so much that you would continue the war for the sake of your own spite.)

"Maybe I'll talk to Minato, then," you say thoughtfully. "If things are settling down, maybe..."

"Don't push him," Mikoto says. "Besides, I plan on making you the little one's godmother. They won't object to it for the secondborn."

(She'd tried to get you named as Itachi's godmother. The clan elders had put their feet down, refusing to entrust the heir to an outsider, even hypothetically. She and Fugaku hadn't even been ready to have children, not really.)

You beam at her, and wrap your arm around her shoulders. "And you'll be godmother to ours," you say. "Have you picked out a name yet?"

"Sasuke, if it's a boy," she says. "Fugaku chose."

"And still the same if it's a girl, then?"

"Of course."

You squeeze the arm around Mikoto's shoulders. "I can't wait to meet them," you say. "I'm sure Shiki would have been glad to, too."

\----

You don't part ways with Mikoto after lunch, instead dragging her around for a while while you run errands. (It gives the kids the chance to shower without worrying about you.) More ink, more scrolls, a couple extra blankets. Mikoto raises her eyebrows, but you just shove one of the soft, wrapped packages into her arms as you part ways at the Uchiha complex gates. "For the future littlest Uchiha," you say.

"It's a little early for that," she says, laughing. "I don't even know if I'm pregnant yet, Kushina."

"Never too early to plan ahead!" you say. The way Mikoto smiles at you is a little more somber than before, but she wraps her arms around the blanket anyway. 

"Just don't get ahead of yourself," she says. "Take care, Kushina."

"Take care of yourself, Mikoto," you say. "I'll see you next week?"

"Same time," she agrees. Unspoken is the 'unless there's a mission' that goes into all shinobi planning.

You wave as you leave, in the direction of your house, but once you're out of sight, you turn back towards the markets. As much as you'd like to steal another nap, you have ramen and some Obito-sized clothes to get. You won't be able to get anything with the Uchiha fan on them without raising eyebrows, but you can at least get the poor boy some _shoes_. And a shirt. And a new weapons pouch, and...

Wallet significantly slimmer, you pack everything into scrolls, get your ramen order and seal _that_ up, and make your way home.

You're half-expecting another presence when you return to the house, but the ones you're expecting aren't the one who sweeps you up into his arms as soon as you're through the door.

"Minato!" you almost shriek. "I thought you were going to be gone for another three days!" Oh, god, are the kids here? Were they here when he got here? You're not a great sensor, but you can't feel anyone else in the house, so hopefully if they were, Obito got them back out of here before Minato noticed.

"I can't stay," your beautiful idiot husband laughs into your hair. He spins you before setting you down, laughing. "We did it, Kushina! Kiri signed the treaty!"

"They did?" you say, slightly dazed. "That easily?"

"I'm sure there's some kind of trick to it," Minato says. "It's Kiri, they're always looking for an angle. But what matters for now is that they signed."

Thoughts cascade into your head faster than you can chain them down, but luckily, you're excused from having to say anything by the breathless way he kisses you. You can blame the shock for why you don't kiss him back immediately, taking a second to process everything before leaning into him. Minato knows your feelings on Kiri; he won't blame you for being less excited for this treaty than you were for the one with Kumo.

But for once, when you think of Kirigakure, it isn't Uzushio you think of.

All you can think about is Rin, and the bijuu in her gut. How the treaties at the end of the last war addressed the matter of the tailed beasts and their distribution through the villages.

You're dead certain that Kiri's has included a clause about their 'missing' Sanbi.

"The war's ending," you say out loud. "It doesn't feel real."

"it doesn't, does it?" Minato laughs into your neck. "I have to go spread the word along the front, but I wanted you to know. I _needed_ you to know. I'd go find Kakashi and Rin to tell them, too, but I don't think they're going to give me enough time for that."

And he's so straightforward, this blond maniac you fell in love with. So brilliant it hurts.

"They'll be home soon," you say. "I'll tell them as soon as they get back."

"Thank you," Minato says. "You can tell them the other thing, too."

"Are you sure?" you ask, even though it fills you with relief, because at least you'll have _some_ good news to give Rin, when you tell her that she won't be able to return to the village. "I thought you wanted them to hear it from you."

Minato nods. "I might be gone longer than planned," he says. "Even with hiraishin, it'll be some time before I can get through every camp on the Kiri front."

You wrap your arms around _him_ and squeeze, until he squeaks your name breathlessly and you release him.

"Mikoto's having another kid," you tell him. Privately, you thank your best friend, for giving you a reason to seem preoccupied.

His face lights up. "That's great! They'll be able to grow up without a war." And then he pauses, looking you up and down. "Wait," he continues. "What's underneath the underneath here?"

You laugh, and lightly smack him in the shoulder. (With your strength, a light smack is still enough to make him teeter.)

" _Kushina_ ," Minato says, smacking your hand in return. "Is that your way of asking if I want to have kids?!"

"We'll talk about it when you get back," you say, reaching up with a shushing finger over his lips. "Just... think about it."

Minato beams at you, all blue eyes and happy energy. Your children will be terrors.

"Right!" he says. "I'll think about it! Got to go, love you!" And he kisses your finger before vanishing in a flash of yellow.

You wait until his chakra signature is nothing more than an echo, and then you slide to your knees in the entry way.

Obito isn't actually supposed to come get you until evening, and that gives you enough time to dry your tears.

\----

You wish that you could have this meal in your kitchen, instead of the strange other dimension, but you can't take the risk. It's just luck that Minato came by in the afternoon, instead of a time when he would have caught you.

You hate going behind his back, but the treaty with Kiri just upgraded this situation from 'tell Minato when it's all over' to 'Minato can never know.'

(As much as you hate the idea of keeping secrets from your husband, that's the life of a shinobi. You know he wouldn't be angry with you about it. Not with Rin's life, and the whole village, hanging in the balance.)

"Is everything all right, Kushina-san?" the girl in question asks, as she helps you unseal the makeshift dining room you packed away in scrolls. (You plan to leave it here; if Obito is going to keep using this dimension like this, it needs furnishings.)

"What makes you think it isn't?" you reply, hoping to divert her attention. Rin's too good of a ninja to fall for it, but hopefully you can make it last a little longer.

"You're preoccupied," she answers. "And you won't look at me straight-on."

You hadn't even noticed that. You make the effort to meet her eyes, and smile weakly. "Sorry," you say. "I'll tell you after we help Obito, all right? Let me worry about it until then."

If you tell them, it'll only increase the chances that they'll screw up somehow. Kakashi's already stressed enough about having the life of one of his teammates in his hands. He doesn't need this on top of everything.

(Doesn't need to think about how he's going to have to lie about losing another comrade without a body to bury. The plan you've come to isn't a happy one, but you can't ask Minato to lose all three of them.)

"...Okay," Rin says. "I trust you, Kushina-san. I can wait."

She really does, and doesn't that just make you want to punch yourself in the face?

"Sorry," you say. Both for making her wait, and for what you're going to tell her.

"It's okay," Rin says. "I'll go get the boys - they should be done changing by now - and then we can eat?"

"Yeah," you agree. "Sounds good."

\----

Obito thanks you profusely for the clothes - they're a little too big, but they're going to fit him in a couple months if he keeps growing. For all that he rejects looking like another member of his clan, he's an incredibly classical looking Uchiha. In black and navy with an orange scarf and orange-threaded fingerless gloves, he manages to look more like the clan heir than Itachi, who inherited the volumeless hair of his parents.

Well, except for the freckles. They're definitely _not_ actually freckles, because you've noticed by now the way they change size in response to his emotions. Cheerful as he is right now, Obito's cheek has a doppled coating of black and dark purple that almost disguises his flush when Rin compliments him on the new clothes. If his right cheek was as thoroughly freckled as his left, it would. 

"One more thing," you tell him, and pull the last item out - a pair of goggles, with round, dark lenses, in a style more appropriate to Kiri or Kusa than the square ones still around his neck. "Here. They'll help hide whether or not you have your Sharingan active from enemies."

That was why you picked them, instead of the lighter, more transparent goggles he favored before.

Obito takes them like they're almost sacred, and very slowly pulls the orange ones from around his neck, handing them back to Rin. Then he pulls the new pair on, first over his eyes - it disguises the strange shape of his new pupil well, too, making both of his eyes just appear dark - before pushing them back up on his forehead.

"Thank you, Kushina-san," he says. 

"Don't thank me yet," you say. "Come on, let's eat."

It's more subdued than team dinners used to be, but you can blame that on lack of Minato instead of the trying experiences the kids have been through since the last time you all had ramen together. Kakashi is more spirited, at least, though he still seems anxious (not that anyone who didn't know him well would know), and he doesn't argue with Obito the way he used to. For about an hour, you all pretend that there's no gloom hanging over you all, filling Obito in on what he missed, Itachi's Academy graduation and the wedding and Maito Guy's continued attempts to beat Kakashi at literally anything. 

Obito looks so shocked when you tell him that Itachi is going to have a younger sibling, and he's probably the first of the clan outside the immediate family to know. He stays there with his mouth open until Kakashi exerts his rarely seen sense of humor and blatantly tries to steal his egg, which turns into a chopsticks fight that finally seems to release some of Kakashi's tension. Rin doesn't even try to break them up, giggling around her noodles.

They're happy, safe, smiling at you and each other. They're still kids.

(Kids who were barely born when the war started. Kids who have never known peace. But kids, nonetheless.)

When food has been eaten and trash is neatly piled in the middle of the table, you clap your hands. "So, before we get down to business, I have one more announcement!"

That gets their attention. You grin. "Minato said I could tell you when you get back from your mission, so technically I'm cheating a little, but what he doesn't know won't hurt him. He's been nominated to take over as Hokage!"

"No way!" Rin, sounding not so much disbelieving as excited.

" _Sensei_?!" Obito, almost loud enough to cover Kakashi's quiet "Hn."

"Yep!" you say. "They're basically just waiting for the last of the treaties to be finished. Once that goes through, he'll be taking over from Sarutobi-sama officially."

"I knew he was working on the treaties, but I didn't realize it was like that..." Rin says. 

"We'll have to throw him a party," Obito says.

"He'll want to throw _you_ a party first," Kakashi says, with the tone of voice of someone who only _tolerates_ parties, at best. You've seen this kid try to wiggle out of showing up to his own birthday, you can't say you're surprised.

"Well, we have some things to do, first," you say. "You guys ready?"

You try not to look too obviously at Kakashi, but you see him nod, if stiffly. Good. You don't know what Obito and Rin did to convince him, and you're not going to ask. 

"Ready," Rin says. Obito just nods, and pulls off the jacket and shirt he just put on. It's time.

(They can do this. Your job is the easy part, especially now that you've pulled that same seal apart once already. Kakashi, with the electricity, and Rin, directing you, have the hard parts.)

Rin sits against a wall, and Obito lays back so that his head and shoulders are in her lap, stomach-up. Kakashi sits on one side of him, and you sit on the other.

"Originally I was going to have Kakashi work from behind, and Kushina-san work from the front," Rin says, "but with all the neural development, I don't think that's such a good idea anymore. So you're both going to have to work from the front."

You and Kakashi look at each other and nod. You reach down and squeeze Obito's hand. He squeezes back, and - 

"Not _that_ hard, kami," you say. "You're going to break my fingers."

The pressure loosens. "Sorry," Obito squeaks.

"Now I understand why octopus wrestling is a sport," you say, rubbing your bruised fingers. 

"Try to relax, Obito," Rin says, putting on her medic voice. She looks at Kakashi. "Kushina-san, if you think you can't get the seal within two minutes, say so immediately. I'd rather have to stop the operation before severe anoxia sets in than bet on a risky success over our time limit." You nod. "Kakashi, give me a demonstration of about a tenth the chakra of Chidori?"

He nods, eyes entirely focused on Obito's chest, and holds his hand out, sparks of electricity darting between his fingers. Rin reaches out, touches her fingers to his, and guides him through, "A bit less than that... not quite that much... hair more... perfect. Apply it as directly to the heart as you can, and then withdraw your hand so Kushina-san can work while keeping your chakra in place. I'll call time every thirty seconds, Withdraw from the seal at the third call, and reactivate his heart on the fourth, regardless of your progress. On my mark?"

You nod. You feel more than see Kakashi do the same. Obito closes his eyes.

"Go," Rin says. 

Kakashi immediately slams his sparking hand onto Obito's chest, which draws a noise of pain from the boy. You don't stop, pushing his hand aside to call the seal to the surface and pick at it with your chakra. It'd a little harder to pick out, with the electricity wrapped around it, but you are relieved to see that it's the same sort of knots of chakra as the one on Rin. You pull the first one apart.

"Time."

The second is more of a struggle, wrapped tighter around the main chamber of Obito's heart. You pull it apart and let the chakra disappear into his blood, and start on the third primary knot. There's ink under your hand now.

"Time."

The third is tied more into the nerves, probably where the mind control aspect comes from, which makes it harder to undo with the thumb of the electricity there. You're not a doctor, you're not even trained in medical seals, but you don't let the panic hit, just carefully finding the final point of the knot.

"Time," Rin says, just as you hook it, and you take hold of it with the most precise chakra you can and you _pull_.

The seal dissolves, just as Rin says,"Time," for the last time, and Kakashi shoves his fingers back down onto Obito's chest, hard enough to bruise, and the static rips itself out from under your fingers. Electric chakra brushes your cheek as you both lean back.

"Obito?" Rin asks hesitantly, brushing her fingers just shy of touching the developing bruise. He's breathing and his posture is relaxed, but that could just as easily be due to unconsciousness.

"Ow," the boy says, flatly and clearly. That answers that, at least.

If when you all hug him, you hear Kakashi sob quietly, you won't tell anyone.

\----

You all take half an hour of recovery time, having tea, Rin continuing to check on Obito's heart every few minutes until she's satisfied that it's going to recover. Then you herd them all back towards the makeshift dining area, sitting back on your cushions.

"So, I've got good news and bad news," you say. "Which do you want first?"

"The bad news," says Kakashi, and at the same time Obito says, "The good news."

Before anyone can say anything more, Obito continues, "That way, we can take as long as we need to handle the bad news before we have to come back."

"We're still due back from our mission tomorrow night," Rin says. "If we take much longer than that, people will notice."

"It's solid enough reasoning," Kakashi says. "Fine, good news first."

"Kiri signed the treaty yesterday," you begin, without preamble. "The war is ending. Minato was in the village this afternoon, long enough to tell me. With Kiri signing on, Iwa won't have any choice - the other major villages have already signed the treaty."

It's good news. It is. But the three of them stare at you with wide eyes, and you suddenly remember that they _can't_ remember a time before the war. That all three of them were orphans before they made chuunin, and you and Minato are the closest thing to parents most of them have.

"It's over?" Obito says nothing but confusion in his voice.

"Not yet," you say. "But it will be."

And Rin, clever Rin, says, "That's the bad news too, isn't it?"

You pause, sigh, and exhale through your mouth.

"I haven't seen the terms of the treaty precisely," you say, "but I'm certain that there's something in it about the bijuu. The Second War was almost at a close when Taki stole the Nanabi from Suna, and that erupted into fighting for another three years - Suna trying to get their bijuu back, and Iwa and Kiri trying to wipe Suna off the map while they were weak. If the Sanbi jinchuuriki appears in Konoha, right after the treaty signing..."

"They'll be able to say we stole their bijuu, and there goes the treaty," Kakashi says.

"So I can't go back," Rin says finally, looking down at her hands. As you watch, Obito reaches out and curls his fingers around hers.

"You can't go back," you agree. "The best thing for it... would be for Kakashi to come back from his mission and report you dead. That way, at least no one would be looking for you as a deserter."

Kakashi looks up, his eye narrowed at you, and you can feel the glare of his hidden Sharingan. "I'm going with - "

" _I'm_ going with Rin," Obito says, cutting him off. Kakashi turns the glare on him, but Obito doesn't falter. "Kushina-san is right. You need to report Rin as killed in action, and then... then you need to be there for Sensei."

Because Minato won't handle losing all three of his students. For a shinobi, he's gentle that way. You knew it immediately, and it doesn't surprise you that Obito knows it, too.

Even Kakashi knows it. He stubbornly shifts his glare to the remains of your ramen, his shoulders slumped. He knows it, but he doesn't want to admit it. "You can't tell him?"

"Operational Security," you say. It's one of the basic codes of the shinobi - if someone doesn't _have_ to know, they don't know. Even if they're going to be Hokage in a few months. (Actually, being Hokage is another reason Minato _can't_ know. He's nowhere near good enough to keep that kind of secret.)

Kakashi closes his visible eye, and you see the fight leech out of him. Rin reaches out, but instead of threading her hands into Kakashi's, she curls his fingers over Obito's old goggles. Then she reaches up and unties her headband, tucking her forehead protector under his fingers, too.

"I'm sorry, Kakashi," she says. "But they're right. Me going back to Konoha isn't worth the treaty. My _life_ isn't worth the treaty."

"I know," Kakashi says, squeezing in his hands the things Rin would never give up, if she were alive. 

"There's still this," Obito says. "We can sneak into the village every once in a while. Maybe?"

He looks at you, hope on his face, even though you know he knows you're going to shake your head. "It's too risky," you say. "And... if I can be selfish, there's something I'd like you to do."

"What is it?" Rin asks.

"It will be dangerous," you say. "S-ranked... no, I guess since we're not telling the Hokage, it's even higher than that. A long term, S-plus ranked mission."

And it hurts, the way all three of them are looking at you. They trust you completely, and you know they won't say no, no matter what the request is, no matter how dangerous it is. 

And here you are, sending them straight into the mouth of the whirlpool, hoping they can learn to swim well enough to survive.

"I want you to go to Kirigakure," you say, "and find out what happened to my village."


	5. Other Side of the World I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obito and Rin go to Kirigakure.
> 
> Almost immediately, someone sees through their bullshit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Part 2! This section stretches out to cover approximately the first month Obito and Rin spend in Kiri, and is 5 chapters and counting already so that's a thing. I have spent far too much time worldbuilding Kiri, so expect to see some familiar faces and some completely new ones.
> 
> Also while we're at it: Kishimoto's Kiri society makes no sense. On the one hand, we're supposed to believe that there's a super tension there between kekkai genkai clans and other shinobi (see: Haku's backstory), but on the other, they supposedly have a caste system that puts clans who originally joined the village at the top and conquered shinobi at the bottom? What's going on there? Anyway, so I jettisoned the caste thing and it's not part of Hold On!Kiri. 
> 
> The Konoha side of the story isn't forgotten, but this is mostly the Kiri show for a couple chapters. You'll see the others... eventually.

_The fire fades away_

_Can you help me?_   
_Can you let me go?_   
_And can you still love me_   
_When you can't see me anymore?_

\---> Obito, six months later

You sit on the edge of a ledge in the ruins of Gakegakure, one of the minor villages destroyed over the course of the war, and watch Rin move through slow taijutsu stances below you. The day would be unbearably hot if not for the breeze continuously coming off the ocean and flowing through the ravine. As it is, it's pleasant, ruffling through your once-again short-cut hair.

Below you, Rin suddenly shifts, going from the slow, meditative stances to aggressive ones actually intended for combat. The hair-raising feeling of bijuu chakra comes out of nowhere, lasting only long enough for her to punch a hole in the stone wall that forms the front of what was once a clan home. She withdraws her fist, spinning into another stance to land a kick, and the chakra disappears again when she's done. 

You can't sense the Sanbi's chakra at all unless you activate your Sharingan, at which point it's obvious, just hidden behind seals that work their way over Rin's shoulders and down her back. Kushina has worked hard on those, the last few months, until Rin could be disguised as a normal shinobi. As long as Kiri relies only on normal sensors instead of detecting dojutsu like the Sharingan and Byakugan, her secret weapon will stay secret.

As long as she doesn't use it. 

When she looks up, you wave, and then drop down from your perch. It was once one of the stone pathways crisscrossing the cliffs that gave the village its name, but the stone had been blown apart, destroying the walkway completely. Most of the walkways up and down the village have at least some damage; the bridges between the sides of the canyon, once a mix of stone and ropes, have all been destroyed. The rubble in the river is the only way to effectively cross, now, and most civilians can't manage that.

It's been two and a half years since Suna destroyed the shinobi village and effectively conquered the Land of Salt, which had previously served as a buffer between their border and Kiri's. The village itself wasn't on the larger, deeper Swift River, the mouth of which was about seventeen miles further south, but had supplied a steady stream of shinobi to protect the port there and the barges that moved up and down it as well as along the coast. 

Now, Suna controls the waterway, and even the civilians have left Gakegakure. The few who remain are down at the sea, well on their way to turning this into just another fishing village. The cliffs of the canyon lie abandoned. 

Civilians can't climb the cliffside paths that remain, and all the shinobi are dead. It makes for the perfect cover story, for when you go to Kirigakure. Two escapees from the destruction of their village, who lived in the ruins as long as they dared risk it, before seeking the protection of a larger group of shinobi.

And it's made for a great training ground, where no one will notice if Rin's control slips, where you can come and go via your dimension whenever you need to. _Kamui_ , the name of the technique floating up to you like a dream one day. You've started to avoid using it unless you have to, though, because even if it isn't explicitly linked with your Sharingan, it's still too powerful and distinctive.

You're distinctive enough already, and you're going to be under heavy suspicion in one of the most notoriously bloody shinobi villages on the map. The last time you saw her, about a month ago, Kushina said that she wouldn't blame you if you wanted to abandon the mission. She ordered you _to_ abandon it, if you thought you were compromised.

A few quick steps takes you across the broken ground to Rin's side. "Hey, Rei," you say. The fake names were agreed on months ago; you're saved the trouble of figuring out last names by the proximity to Suna, at least. Lots of shinobi in smaller villages don't use family names unless they're from noteworthy clans.

"Hey," she says, relaxing her stance. Her markings are gone and her hair's grown out into a short ponytail - just different enough to make her whole face look like someone else. "How does it look?"

"Perfect," you tell her. "You ready to go?"

Rin sighs. "I wish we had a better plan than walking up to Kiri and going 'hey, we want to join you, please don't kill us,'" she says. 

You wince dramatically. "So do I," you say. "As long as they don't try to make us kill each other, though, it'll be fine."

"You just made that pact because you couldn't stand to hit me," Rin answers, a sparkle in her eyes.

"I hit you all the time!" you say. "We sparred for two hours yesterday!"

"That's not for real and you know it," she says. A light shove into your shoulder, and she turns towards the cliffs. "Come on, let's get our stuff, if we're going."

You catch up with her quickly, following her up the cliffsides into the cave-house that you claimed as yours, and gather up your things. There's no point waiting any longer.

\----

The whole thing, of course, is a performance for the sake of any Kiri or, frankly, Suna-nin who might be watching you. The key to not blowing your cover is to acting like there isn't one, so you actually have survived on what you could find in the ruined village, worked with the increasingly worn equipment you could scavenge, and pack up like you have no other possessions worth coming back for. And aside from changing your names, you act like you would anyway, your friendship and relief at seeing each other alive again looking real because it is real.

Kushina didn't have any formal experience in spying, but what she did have was over a decade of experience in stifling herself without _losing_ herself. It's made you all the more aware of what this mission means to her.

_Find out what happened to Uzushio. Who condemned it and why. Why none of our calls for help reached Konoha in time._

You understand keenly, after six months in a dead village, building lives for yourselves as its residents.

You and Rin take your time journeying to Kiri, water-walking and sometimes cooling down by swimming in the shallows (and in your case, the not so shallows). By the time you're a day away from the village, you're both definitely aware of the eyes of other shinobi on you.

"Anbu?" Rin says to you, the first time either of you has really spoken all day. 

"Probably," you say. "Next island?"

She nods, and kicks off the water's surface in a sprint. You follow after her, until she comes to a stop on a strip of sand barely wider than she is tall. High tide - not the best time for facing Kiri ninja, if this goes badly.

(But then, if this goes badly, all you have to do is get a hold of her and you're gone.)

You come to rest just behind her in the sand, shaking sea spray off your jacket. The chakra presence behind you stays a hundred meters or so out to sea, though there's no trademark cloud of mist to indicate them.

(You're sure that if you can sense one, there's three more you can't, because that's just how Anbu are.)

"Kirigakure-san?" Rin calls back over the waves. "We'd like to talk to you, if that's okay."

You're still four hours away from their village, easy. It's a perfectly polite distance to stop and announce yourself, as shinobi openly approaching another village. 

You wrap your hand around the battered Gakegakure headband tied around your neck. Rin's is tied around her waist, alongside a battered medic's pack. You don't need to pretend that you're nervous as hell, because you _are_.

Eventually, mist materializes from the water in front of you. The approach of the Anbu agent is silent on the water, as their body materializes out of the mist. You think it's a woman, tall and wiry muscle and just enough curve to be distinct. She's wearing a mask with geometric patterns, stripes of red around the eye holes, and a black top cropped to expose her stomach and the last few inches of her ribcage. Gill slits are visible under it, though they're as tightly closed as your own. A faint genjutsu probably obscures other identifying marks.

Explains why there was no trace of her on the surface, at least. You and Rin both bow as much as you risk bowing to an unknown shinobi, never taking your eyes off her. You wish it was worth the risk to use your Sharingan; against a fully trained Anbu, your regular vision might not catch her moving in time to do anything about it.

"Thank you, Anbu-san," you say. "We appreciate you speaking to us."

The woman folds her arms, not speaking but in a clear 'get on with it' posture.

"We're survivors from Gakegakure," Rin says. "We've trained as much as it's possible for us to train on our own, and we're looking to join another village, now that ours is gone."

The Anbu tips her head to the side. Something about it strikes you as more predatory than simply appraising. Then again, that's probably par for the course in Kiri.

"Name, rank, specialty," she finally says, voice cold and distant.

"Reiko, chuunin, medic and sensor," Rin says.

"Tobi, chuunin, infiltration and information retrieval," you say.

Another moment of predatory consideration and silence. 

"Proceed after one hour," says the Anbu. "You will stop at the main gate and wait for escort."

"Thank you," Rin says, bowing again. You do likewise.

The Anbu doesn't give you any further acknowledgement, turning her back on you dismissively and walking back into the water. Between the waves and the fog, she disappears.

You exhale loudly, putting off the picture of relaxing your guard. 

"Don't get too comfortable," Rin says. "I'm sure they're going to have some kind of test lined up for us."

"We didn't get killed on sight," you say. "That's something to celebrate, isn't it?"

"We'll throw a party after the inevitable horrible interrogations," Rin says. It's intended to be sarcastic, but you laugh anyway, and after a moment she meets your eyes and giggles.

Nothing to do but wait, so you sit down and doodle spirals in the sand until it's time to go.

\----

Kirigakure's main gate is on the water, controlling both the shipping and shinobi trades. You imagine that there must be other gates, to allow travel to the rest of the main island that also hosts the Land of Water's civilian capital, but you're not in a position to go looking for them at the moment.

You and Rin have to dodge out of the way of a fishing boat as you wait, but otherwise the half hour or so you spend standing on water outside the gates is uninterrupted. Eventually, figures materialize out of the mist inside the open gates; when they approach, it becomes clear that they're the Anbu woman from earlier and a man in a jounin vest with blue hair and an eye patch. 

You both bow again, when they approach. The man bows back, not nearly as deeply. The Anbu simply stands off to the side, watching you from beneath her mask. 

"My name is Ao," the man says. "It's my responsibility to scan the two of you for genjutsu before you're permitted entry to the village." He nods to the Anbu standing at his side. "Assuming you pass, Red-Six will take you to quarters for the night. You'll be assessed on your skills separately and individually in the morning."

You nod; out of the corner of your eye, you see Rin do the same. As you watch, Ao reaches up and removes his eye patch.

The milky-eye eye underneath could easily be mistaken for blind by a civilian, or even a shinobi of another village. As it is, you know the sight of it all too well, and it's all you can do to not grab Rin and jump straight into Kamui right then and there.

You should have realized you were tempting fate the moment you thought that things would go fine as long as Kiri doesn't have the likes of the Byakugan.

The area around the white eye has the scrunched skin and veins of an activated Byakugan, and the lid is still red and irritated; the transplant of the stolen eye must be relatively recent. You see both of Ao's widen when they fall on Rin, and then glance you over, and every muscle in your body is tense, waiting to jump - 

But then he just puts the patch back over the eye and nods. "Get good rest," he says. "I'm certain you're well aware of Kirigakure's reputation. Don't expect us to go easy on you."

"Of course not," you manage to say, feeling all three hearts bouncing around in your chest. "Thank you for the opportunity, sir."

Ao just nods to the Anbu before turning away and walking back to the village. She, in turn, nods to the two of you, and leads you through the gates.

\----

Although you catch Rin's eye once or twice as you're lead up into the village proper, it's not nearly enough time to talk. The Anbu puts you on a quick pace, and you have to work hard enough to keep up over first the waters of the harbor and then vegetation-topped rooftops that you almost wonder if this isn't part of the test as well. 

The few flashes of Rin you do see, she looks just as confused as you feel. There's no way that Ao missed the Sanbi's chakra roiling under her skin; if the Sharingan can pierce the seals Kushina put on it, then the Byakugan definitely can. The Hyuuga are far more adept at the perception of chakra within someone's body than the Uchiha, who are more adept at the perception of motion and chakra outside the body. It's why Hyuuga are considered sensors even if they have no ability to detect chakra at all, unlike your clan.

The two of you don't get any chance to talk even when you come to a stop, at a thin building beside what must be the Mizukage's headquarters, if the large 'water' character on the top is any indication.

"This is jounin headquarters," the Anbu says. "You will stay here for the night. Food and individual rooms have been provided for you."

"Thank you," Rin says.

The Anbu doesn't say anything, merely leading you into the nest of Kirigakure jounin. There aren't as many as there would have been in Konoha, you can't help but notice. The other thing that you notice is that some of them aren't much older than you.

It makes sense. Kirigakure was at war too, after all. In wartime, everyone gets their promotions early to replace the fallen. Even so, the number of _young_ jounin feels unsettling.

The Anbu points you into one room, and Rin into one three doors down. Inside, you find a meal - rice and fish stew with a sparse quantity of vegetables - and a futon. There's really not that much else to it.

You flop down on the cushion in front of the meal with a sigh. You don't expect that they would poison you at this stage, but it never hurts to check, so you run a jutsu over the food before you eat. It's not _much_ better than rations, but it's warm and variety is the spice of life, so you take your time enjoying it anyway.

You don't bother trying to communicate with Rin. If she needs you, you'll feel the flare of bijuu chakra, and if you need her, you'll just go _get_ her. Kiri clearly intends for you to be separated, so you let them do that.

But there's not much else to do, so before too long you unroll the futon and stretch out on it. As you stare at the ceiling, your eye socket tingles - a sure indication that somewhere, either back in Konoha or on a mission somewhere, Kakashi is using your Sharingan. It's been a fairly regular occurrence the last few weeks, so you can only imagine that he's thrown himself into training with it.

Your last thoughts as you drift off are that you're glad he's training so regularly. Genius or not, he's going to have to work hard to keep his lead over you.

Then you fall asleep.

\----

You dream, as you often do, of caverns and dark places, of rock collapses and white creatures in the shape of people that aren't _really_ people. Of trying to escape, to get back, to get away - that's the most common narrative of these dreams. You're always running to or from something, sometimes both.

This time, you're running out to sea to escape the Zetsu trying to drag you back to that cave, except the Zetsu steadily turn into the reaches branches of Konoha's trees, and the water you're running on turns into the empty canyon of Gakegakure, as you race along between the sides of the cliffs. There's a rumble, and the rocks begin to fall, and then suddenly Kakashi is in front of you again, and you throw yourself between him and - 

You see the flash of a woman's face between the falling rocks only because the Sharingan has replayed that moment in your head so many times. Even so, you can't remember more in the morning than the fact that it was there.

\----

You sit up and rub your head, blinking tiredly before you put your goggles back on. The Gakegakure protector, you leave off; today may or may not be your first day as a Kirigakure shinobi, so you're going to look the part as much as you can. 

No one seems to have entered the room since you went to sleep; the remains of your dinner is still right where you put it, and you can't sense anything off with the room's energy. That's reassuring, at least. You rise and shower, in cooler water than you would have before everything, so that you can let the water flow through your mouth and down to refresh your gills. You'd learned quickly that they didn't like scalding hot showers much.

It's probably the end of hot springs for you, which is a disappointment, but it meant that you and Rin were never fighting over who got the warm bath water in Gakegakure, so there's some upsides. You always have to find the upsides in a situation like this.

For example: Upside, you can still distantly feel Rin's chakra a few doors down, and it's more steady than it was last night. Upside, you're not being tortured or interrogated. You don't even seem to be observed that closely, though you find that so odd that you feel like you must be missing something.

You rinse and dress as quickly as you can, and then resign yourself to sitting and waiting until someone comes to get you. It's easier than it used to be to slide into a meditative state, when you were all raw energy, but it's harder in some ways, too.

When you meditate these days, you tend to feel vague flickers across the back of your mind, from some distant ocean. You haven't brought it up to Rin, because she has enough in _her_ head to deal with, and it's not as though she could really help anyway. She doesn't have a summoning contract at all, much less one as weird as yours.

You think of the Anbu with the gills, and wonder if there's other people in Kiri with contracts like yours. Someone you can talk to about this whole thing would be nice.

And then there's the occasional tingle in your eye from Kakashi, serving as proof of him being alive, and you don't know what to make of that, either. Shinobi don't usually get organ transplants, and even more so, they don't transplant something as chakra-dense as a doujutsu eye. Not while the donating party is still living, at any rate.

Rin told you that it was almost impossible to get the hospital to let go of her or Kakashi for a month after that mission - her for having the skill to pull off a field transplant like that, and Kakashi because they were worried that his body would reject the eye. Somehow or another, however, both your biology and chakra signatures were compatible enough that all it does is ceaselessly drain his chakra when he has it uncovered.

You were a medical miracle even before you came back from the dead. It's amusing to some dark part of you, that even if you never step foot in Konoha again, your name will at least be remembered in the medical textbooks.

A questioning thought ripples along yours, never quite still in the same way the surface of the ocean never goes completely still, but you brush it off for now. There's someone approaching, the signature of an unfamiliar shinobi.

A knock at the door, more polite than you expected, so you say, "Come in?" 

The door swings open to reveal a woman in a jounin vest. Her hair is dark, and for a shinobi she doesn't seem especially muscular. She's also the shortest person you've seen in Kiri so far by a good couple of inches.

"Please come with me," she says. "We've prepared a test of your skills."

"Okay," you say, and you stand up and follow her deeper into the building. You give two brief flares of your chakra as you pass Rin's door, an old signal for _I'm okay_.

There's the smallest of double-flares in response, and your shoulders relax just a hair as you continue after the jounin.

\----

You're led down several flights of stairs at the back of the building, into a portion of it that you know must be underground. You start getting goosebumps, wondering if this is where interrogations take place, but you keep your mouth shut of all questions and instead focus on remembering where you're going.

Eventually, the woman leading you comes to a stop and opens a door, gesturing you inside. You go in, and she follows behind you, shutting the door. 

The man from before, Ao, is seated at a desk, and he nods at you. You give a slight bow and say, "Good morning, Ao-san. Thank you for the room."

"I hope you slept well," he says, but it's polite noise, not real sentiment, and he gets right down to business. "To earn your place in Kirigakure, you will prove your skills by demonstrating them. Your task is to retrieve the recipe for a poison antidote from this room, and escape the building with it."

You nod, even as something in your stomach wavers. It's a difficult test, to be certain, escaping from a building full of jounin. But on another level, you appreciate the fact that it's a mirror of a real mission, rather than some kind of formal exam. You've never done well at those; eyes directly on your performance gives you anxiety.

"After we leave, you will have half an hour to locate the document before someone returns to this room," Ao continues. "In total, you have three hours to complete the exercise. If you fail..."

"I understand," you say. "I won't be late." It's not as though there are going to be any old ladies who need help with their groceries here.

Ao nods, and then looks at the woman behind you. "You will report to either myself, at the front entrance, or Otoyo-san at the rear. If you exit the building by another method, you are still expected to report to one of us before the time is up. In addition, five jounin within the building are aware of the exercise, and will raise the alarm if they catch you. Understood?"

"Perfectly, sir," you say. You imagine that even the jounin who aren't aware of the exercise will raise the alarm if they catch you, a strange shinobi, wandering around the headquarters. It's just that only five of them will be actively _looking_ for you.

"Good," Ao says, standing up. "In that case, I wish you luck." That is a slightly more genuine sentiment than before. He and the woman - Otoyo - leave, closing the door behind them. You hear it lock.

When they're gone, you allow yourself one deep breath to steady your nerves, another deep breath to lament that you can't use Kamui because of your cover (it would really make this far too easy), and then you get to work.

The desk Ao was sitting at has three papers on it, but even a brief skim shows that those aren't what you're interested in; they're three pages from some kind of budget report. You go into the drawers of the desk next, mindful of the potential for traps, checking all of them for false bottoms and backs. There _is_ a false bottom in the top drawer, even, but the only thing in it is a paperclip (which you take for picking the room's locked door - better than a senbon) and a picture of Otoyo and a girl in a chuunin vest who looks to be two or three years younger than you. The girl is giving the camera a peace sign, which reminds you heart-achingly of your own team photo.

You hope Minato-sensei and Kakashi are okay. 

Then you slide the draw closed and move to the next drawer. In total, it takes you about ten minutes to work through the desk, maybe twelve. Your sense of time isn't always the best, though, so you mentally clock it at 'fifteen' and hurry to the bookshelf. Each book gets pulled one-by-one, checked under the covers, and shaken for loose papers before you return it. A tiny wind jutsu blows dust back over the spines.

Okay, not there either. You take another deep breath, bending under the desk again, and - aha!

You slide the drawer full of pens with its false bottom all the way out, carefully unpeel the slip of paper taped to the underside of the desk _above_ the drawer off, and replace the drawer as carefully as you can. Unfolding the paper reveals what at least _looks_ to be a recipe of some kind of antidote, with preparation instructions, administration instructions, and some dozen ingredients that you at least vaguely recognize from Rin's training on poison antidotes.

You fold it back up and tuck it into the waterproof pocket behind your kunai pouch. Now to get out of here. You relock the drawer on the desk, pop the lock on the door, and lock it again before closing it behind yourself.

A vague chakra signature, coming in your direction. You don't think it's been half an hour yet, but you have no idea how much use this hallway actually sees, so you jump up and cling to the ceiling with the faintest amount of chakra you can manage, feet braced against the wall to help support your weight. An unfamiliar shinobi, a woman with shockingly white hair, passes underneath you without looking up, not stopping at the door. 

You breathe out silently, wait until she's passed around the corner, and drop back down to the floor. Two and a half hours to get out of here.

You're really glad you have a good sense of direction.

\----

Getting back up to the ground floor takes you the better part of an hour, but you can't help but feel like that's the easy part. Once you're out of the basement, the number of people you encounter skyrockets.

Initially, you'd planned on going to one of the upper floors and going out a window, but after half an hour brings you to two staircases and they both have shinobi just _hanging out_ on them, you think better of it. The rear entrance that was mentioned to you doesn't seem to be any better; there's a pair of _Anbu_ in front of that, and between the two, you'd rather take your chances with the jounin in the staircases.

You wonder, as you slip into the last hour of your time, if that's not the point. Kirigakure, of the _Bloody_ Mist, and maybe it's too much to hope that the point isn't to test both your combat and infiltration skills. That's the thought that occupies you for the next twenty, as you slowly finish working your way to the front of the building, mostly but not always stuck to the ceiling and inching sideways with your feet against the wall.

Well, that and the fact that you can no longer sense Rin in the building, and in fact haven't been able to since you left the basement. You hope that that means she passed whatever challenge they established for her. You don't let yourself think on it any further.

The front door doesn't get that much traffic as you approach, in comparison to the rest of the hallways. You half-wonder if that indicates that Kiri jounin are the same as the ones in Konoha that you've grown up with, meaning that they prefer to come and go via windows and leave the doors to civilians and genin. In fact, you have to freeze in the hallway outside it as a genin team and their sensei pass underneath you. 

The sensei says something in greeting to someone on the other side of the entrance hall door, and the voice responds with amusement. You groan in the back of your mind and loosen your chakra senses to see what awaits you on the other side of the door.

Upside: Other than the exiting jounin and their team, there's only one chakra signature, just off to the side of the door.

Definitely not an upside: That's _way_ too strong of a chakra signature to be a regular jounin. It's not strong enough to be the Rokubi jinchuuriki, and you're grateful for _that_ small blessing, but it's stronger than Minato-sensei's and they're making him Hokage in, what, two weeks?

Something like two weeks. You push the thought aside, because it's not like you'll be able to go. (You push the thought aside that you _could_ go, if you left Kiri now, grabbed Rin, and went home. You don't even know where she is right now, you're just relying on the fact that you haven't felt the flare of the Sanbi's chakra to indicate that she's in trouble.)

You could try to find another route. But your clock is ticking down, and while you think you could find the staircase you originally went up from here, there's probably a jounin sitting in that as well. Either way comes with slipping past or fighting a shinobi definitely better than you who's on their guard.

At least if you go this way, you know that Ao is waiting not too far on the other side for your 'report.' So you sigh to yourself and drop down into the hallway. Nothing for it but to do it.

Well, nothing for it but to have a water clone do it. You're not particularly impressive with water jutsu, but Konoha's academy-taught clones dissipate in one hit, and water clones would be more normal in coastal villages anyway. That was why Kushina made you and Rin both learn it.

So you make four clones, send the first one to open the door, and the other two to join you in jumping over the first one when it inevitably gets demolished. And it does, taking a good hit from a sudden, sword-first charge from the shinobi behind the door, popping into nothing more than water that mostly disappears before it can even splash the ground.

You roll in the air and land towards your right, taking a moment to get a better look at your opponent. He's not _that_ much older than you, you think, which makes his apparent chakra reserves even more terrifying to contemplate, since chakra growth doesn't stabilize until the early twenties. More interesting, however, is the fact that his skin is _blue_ , with gill-like markings that probably _are_ gills and a grin full of shark teeth.

"Nice dodge," he says cheerfully. "I didn't think you'd actually be bold enough to come around the front. Figured someone else would get to do the fun part."

So they _did_ intend to make you fight. One of your clones sighs dramatically on your behalf. Fucking Kiri.

The jounin straightens, shaking the water off his sword. It's a normal enough sword as far as you can tell, though it looks like it's a bit heavier than the standard issue Kiri blades you've run into before. No doubt this means he's strong as hell as well as fast, and probably has more battlefield experience than you do. Kiri sent even their genin out into battle; Konoha tried to keep kids away from the front lines until they made chuunin, and you weren't involved in the war all that long before you 'died.'

You don't have to kill him, you remind yourself. You just have to get _past_ him somehow.

"Tobi, right?" he asks, and you and your clones all nod at the same time. "Hoshigaki Kisame. Nice to meet you."


	6. Other Side of the World II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How to make friends and influence people. And by people, I mean shark people.
> 
> Meanwhile, Namikaze Minato gets a cool new hat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kishimoto fails at worldbuilding counts 1 and 2: We never get names for Minato's teammates (though there is a picture of them). Also, shinobi who are disabled by their injuries aren't shown on-page until the Boruto era. Today I fix both things.

"Nice to meet you," you and one of your clones say in unison. You can't help but raise your eyebrows a little. You've heard of shinobi who insist on introducing themselves when they fight, and it's not even _that_ uncommon a quirk, but you didn't expect to run into one here. It's usually either a boast or an honor thing.

Your impression of Kiri is that they don't do much on the honor thing, but this guy doesn't seem the boasting type, either.

The other clone, now dubbed Sighing Obito in your head, inches towards the door. Hoshigaki's eyes flicker in that direction - you can't use your Sharingan, but having had it at all has taught you a number of little things to look for with your regular vision to indicate where someone's paying attention.

If you're lucky, that means he thinks Sighing Obito is the real one. Clone jutsu are pretty much useless against sensors (except for Konoha's Shadow Clones), but you just have to hope that this guy doesn't have that on top of his obvious physical skills.

So you palm a kunai and charge at him just the way a clone would to make a distraction, and let Sighing Obito bolt for the closed door. Naturally, Hoshigaki goes for Sighing Obito, ignoring you and the other clone except for a kick in the general direction of your gut. You sidestep it with ease and slash at his shoulder, but he catches your kunai on an arm guard and Sighing Obito only barely avoids taking his sword to the shoulder. All three of you spring away as he sweeps the sword to drive you back towards the entrance door.

On both counts, it's just a matter of getting a feel for each others' reflexes. You're trying to figure out just how much this is going to suck, and he's trying to figure out how serious he needs to get with you.

(He's almost as fast as you are, so it's going to suck a _lot_.)

Even before he's finished swinging, Hoshigaki is starting up a water jutsu - you charge in to try and interrupt, but the swing of his sword takes out the other clone. A wave of summoned water appears and washes you back towards the entrance with all the strength of a tsunami. Your back hits the wall, knocking the breath out of you in a scattering of bubbles, and Sighing Obito is dispersed entirely by the impact.

And the jutsu doesn't stop there - Hoshigaki's absurd amount of chakra means that he can probably keep it going a while. If you were a normal shinobi, you'd drown here, just like that, because that's the kind of ruthless they are in Kiri. 

As it is, the continued battering of additional water obscures your form, giving you a chance to plan. You yank the front of your jacket open and suck agitated, oxygenated water in through your gills, your head clearing almost immediately. The force of it makes it hard to do much else, and it's impossible to peel yourself away from the wall. 

Well, if he expects you to drown, you'll drown. You still have a kunai in one hand, and you clutch a handful of senbon in the other, and wait. One minute, two...

Just when you're genuinely wondering how long he actually _can_ keep this up, the relentless waves stop. You slump forward, doing your best to look limp as you fall towards the floor. Over your head, you hear Hoshigaki sigh.

"Too bad," he says. "You had some pretty promising reflexes there, kid." He steps forward, one leg swinging out as though to push your body over with his foot - 

You stab your kunai into the top of his shoe as hard as you can, pinning him to the floor where he is. There's an exclamation of pain as you flip back into a standing position, taking off for the door, but Kisame's reach is long and he manages to grab the back of your open jacket, yanking you back and slamming you back into the wall in front of him.

This time, you get slammed into it shoulder first, and you feel your shoulder dislocate from the blow. It's not a big deal, you can pop your bones in and out of joint anywhere on your body now, but it does hurt like _fuck_ when you're not doing it intentionally.

"Fuck," Hoshigaki breathes.

"Fuck," you agree, twisting so that you can see him out of one eye. 

You can see his eyes drop to the side of your chest, where your gills are exposed (your jacket still held tightly in Hoshigaki's grip). There's a pained expression on his face, but he still looks amused. "Didn't think any of the other villages had gill-breathers," he says.

"Just me," you say. The gills behind your ears flare as you breathe heavily. You count the senbon between your fingers, in the hand hidden between your pinned shoulder and the wall. Three, but one of them got partially embedded in your palm in the impact, so you can probably only count on two.

Hoshigaki snorts. "Got any other tricks I should know about?"

"A couple," you admit, and twist your dislocated arm around, stabbing the pair of senbon into the meat of the arm he's using to hold you against the wall. With the other, you reach around to take hold of his hand and _squeeze_ , crushing his wrist until he releases your jacket. Both your shoulders dislocated, you swing your weight to the side, pulling his arm with you.

It's a smart move, as the hand you _aren't_ holding is still full of sword, and Hoshigaki slams it full force into the wall where you just were. You release him when you feel the crack of something in his wrist breaking, and roll down and to the side as your muscles snap your arms back into their sockets. 

Hoshigaki swears, and drops to use his good hand to yank the kunai out of his foot. You keep rolling, jump upright, and fly for the door, your feet barely feeling like they're touching the ground. You lose half a critical second because it opens inward and forces you to stop, and by the time you have it open Hoshigaki is right behind you again, holding your kunai instead of his sword.

That's probably the only reason you don't get completely gutted as he slams into you, shoulder-and-weapon-hand first. As it is, the kunai leaves a long slash across the side of your stomach as you try to twist out of the way.

Hoshigaki grins at you, all feral glee and shark teeth. You puff up your cheeks and spit ink in his face, then twist up to get a leg over his shoulder and propel yourself off him with your feet. Your already-much-bruised shoulder hits the doorframe, but you bounce off enough to wriggle your way out. Only barely, though, because Hoshigaki's blindly-grabbing hands touch your shoe and only just barely slip off.

You pull yourself up and sprint down the path to where you feel Ao's chakra signature, just barely at the property line. You don't let yourself catch your breath until you're almost face to face with him, unsealing the waterproof pocket in your weapons pouch and thanking yourself for your earlier foresight.

Ao doesn't looked _impressed_ , exactly, but he doesn't look disappointed as you hand him the paper. He clicks a stop watch in his hand as he unfolds it, visible eye scanning the paper, and then nods. "Three minutes and six seconds to spare," he says, glancing at the watch. 

You exhale and let your shoulders sag. You cut it close, but you managed.

"And you went through Hoshigaki Kisame," Ao adds, looking back at the door. You turn to glance back; it's still standing open, and Hoshigaki has pulled himself up and is staggering in your direction, using his sheathed sword as a crutch. "Did you fight any others?"

"No, sir," you say. 

Ao nods. He reaches into the pouch on his belt and pulls out a strip of black cloth, with the burnished metal of a Kirigakure plate attached to it, and hands it to you. "Welcome to Kirigakure, Tobi," he says. "Your final rank will be decided based on Hoshigaki's report of your skills, but I think you can look forward to serving as one of our jounin soon, if not immediately."

Something in your heart swells. You remember all the ways your clan treated you like a disappointment, the dirty looks, the people who told you to not even bother trying to reach the rank of _chuunin_ after coming in last in your genin class.

And now here you are, in _Kirigakure_ , a few formalities away from jounin. And without using your Sharingan at all, which means that _with_ it, you're certainly at at least that level.

You maintain your composure long enough to take the forehead protector from Ao with a bow of thanks, but then you immediately thrust it in the air with a whoop. Your bruised shoulders protest the motion immediately, and you wince.

"For your first assignment, get yourself and Hoshigaki to the hospital," Ao says, lifting his voice enough that the limping shinobi can hear him as well. "Hoshigaki, I'll get your report tomorrow."

"Yes, sir," Hoshigaki says, stopping in his limp in your direction about ten feet away. Most of the upper part of his face is stained with your ink. Ao vanishes in a swirl of mist, and the two of you meet each other's eyes and both sigh. It's the classic relaxation of your commanding officer leaving you alone, and you're glad that _some_ things in Kiri are the same.

You tie the headband around your neck. Then you make your way over and shove your shoulder under Hoshigaki's arm to help support his weight. "Sorry about your foot," you say.

"Don't worry about it," he says. The crazily-pleased shark grin is back in place, and the foot in question looks like it's been thoroughly bandaged under the sandal. "This is the first time I've come off worse in a one-on-one fight in years."

You believe it. "You only came off worse because I can pop my shoulders back in," you say. "Which way to the hospital, Hoshigaki-san?"

"You can go ahead and call me Kisame," he says. "I think you earned that. I'm keeping the kunai, by the way." As he talks, he leans on to push you into turning to the left and starts guiding you in that direction. 

"That's fair," you say.

"I know you don't have a family name," Kisame continues, "but I gotta ask: are you a clan brat?" 

There's something about the way he says it that makes you hesitate, but you shake your head. "Not as far as I know," you say. "Just another orphan who wound up a shinobi. Why?"

"Usually people with summon contracts like ours are," he replies. "The gills are kind of a giveaway. People think of them as a bloodline thing, but they're all because of shapeshifter contracts."

You think about the Anbu with gills, and nod slightly. "I don't think there's anyone else with an octopus contract," you say. "Are contracts like that common here?"

"Yeah," Kisame agrees. "They're not usually as dramatic as this - " he pauses in his shuffle to gesture at his face. " - but there's seven or eight families with them. The gills are a pretty good advantage around here."

You laugh a little. "Yeah, I noticed that."

"Left at the corner," Kisame directs. "And yeah - four historic clans and a couple of minor families, and we're all treated pretty much the same as the bloodline clans."

You nod like you understand, even though you get the feeling that this is some kind of village politics thing that's way over your head. You just file it away for later, when you have more context. Hopefully you'll be able to compare notes with Rin soon.

Or you could get lucky, because Kisame's apparently pretty perceptive. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, huh?" he says as you turn the corner. The hospital is in sight a block or so away.

"Not a clue," you agree cheerfully. 

Kisame sighs and drops his voice a bit as you pass a pair of what you think are chuunin, but might be especially tall genin. They veer away from the two of you on the street with wary glances. "Just stay out of clan politics if you can manage it," he says. "Bloodline clans aren't well-liked in Kiri, and people tend to catch the summon clans in the middle of it, too."

You nod. "Thanks for the warning," you say. "Don't know how much I'll be able to follow it, though."

You pause in the street and pull your goggles down, turning towards Kisame for long enough for him to get a clear sight of your octopus eye. "I lost the eye and my arm on a mission," you say, keeping most of the details out of it for now. The story you and Rin are using is close enough to the truth that you'll be able to keep it straight without trouble, it just skips over some of the other important parts like Konoha and the whole jinchuuriki thing. "Rei figures I'm at least a quarter octopus by weight."

Kisame doesn't react much to the sight of your eye, at least, just chuckling as you pull your goggles back into place. "Guess you'll fit in with the rest of us fine, then," he says. "You two close?"

"Me and Rei?" you say. "Of course. We were genin teammates. We were best friends _before_ it was just us."

You slow carefully to help Kisame up into the hospital itself. The shinobi at the desk looks over the two of you and shakes her head with a sigh, before pointing you at a pair of chairs in the waiting room. The two of you sit.

"I hope she does alright," you say once you've sat down. You haven't felt a spike of bijuu chakra, so you have to figure she's okay, but you can't help but worry, now that the immediate mission is off your mind.

"If she's anywhere near as tough as you, she'll be fine," Kisame says. He leans down to start pulling his stabbed foot out of his sandal and makes a pained face when it jostles his wrist. "The only point against you is that you could have killed me and you _didn't_."

"I didn't think it would make a good impression if I killed a jounin the day I joined the village," you say. It's not _wrong_ , but you really were more concerned with staying alive. 

Kisame snorts. "Yeah, well, welcome to Kiri. Nobody would've cared much. Not that I'm complaining."

You lean back, decide it's a mistake as soon as your back hits the back of the chair, and lean forward instead. "Probably not a good idea to make _enemies_ my first day in the village either," you say.

"Now you're thinking like a Mist-nin," Kisame says. He looks up at the desk, frowns at the shinobi on duty (not a glare, but more a disappointed look), and then looks back at you. "Looks like they've decided we're far enough from dying that we can wait a while. Help brace this wrist for me?"

"Sure," you say. It gives you something to do to take your mind off waiting.

\----> Kakashi

"And so it is my honor to present to you - Namikaze Minato, the Fourth Hokage!"

You tell yourself that the burn in your eye is just because you've had your Sharingan uncovered for the whole ceremony, to cement the images in your mind, and not because you're on the edge of tears. You conveniently choose to ignore the fact that your normal eye is also burning.

Minato-sensei bows to the crowd, and the assembled jounin and other shinobi of the village bow back. You're not actually standing with them - you're at the front, near the stage, wedged in between Kushina and Nakimori Kojiro, Minato's surviving genin teammate, in the area reserved for Minato's family. On Kojiro's other side, Jiraiya has actually bothered to come back to the village for his student's investiture. 

Still, all of you bow back except Kojiro, who inclines his head as much as he's capable, bracing his weight forward against his crutches. It's the only time you've taken your eyes off the stage in an hour, and you can feel the chakra drain starting to catch up with you.

On Kushina's other side is enough empty space for two people. Minato-sensei had insisted on space for his two lost students, as well as space for his lost teammate on Jiraiya's far side. For Konoha's orphan genius, his wife and teammates are the whole of his family.

You and Kushina almost pointedly didn't look at each other, when he'd declared that in the planning for the ceremony. You've gotten good, mostly, at not acknowledging Obito and Rin ever existed. It's a typical enough shinobi way of dealing with grief, and it's the best cover you have for the fact that you _aren't_ grieving them.

Still, you can't stop thinking about them, and you can't stop yourself from wishing they were here.

The assembled shinobi straighten back up, as Sarutobi settles the hat on his successor's head in place of Minato's old forehead protector. When he steps away, polite applause turns quickly into a wave of cheering.

"Thank you, everyone!" Minato shouts above the din. "Let's continue to protect our beloved home together!"

More cheering and whooping. And then, with a grin, Minato sweeps the hat off his head, waving it high in the air, before he throws a kunai with his other hand and vanishes. The cheering reaches an ear-shattering volume, but you just sigh as you cover your eyes, finally closing your eyes and letting the flow of chakra to your Sharingan cease. You slide your forehead protector back down over it as the crowd starts to disperse.

"He just can't resist showboating, can he?" Kojiro asks, sounding both fond and exasperated, as the din settles down.

"He gets it from your sensei," Kushina says, sounding equally amused.

Jiraiya, proving her point, mimes taking a blow to the heart, pressing his hand over his chest. "I don't know what you're talking about, Kushina-chan," he says, looking about as innocent as he can manage (which, in your opinion, isn't very).

As a point of fact - 

"You write porn for a living," you say as blandly as you possibly can.

"I write literature!" the Sannin protests.

You pause, and almost regret that you've covered your Sharingan already, because you pull a slim book out of your pack and open it to a marked page. Over the edge, you see the color drain out of Jiraiya's face as you start to read aloud - 

" _And she whispered, voice breaking in the throes of her want -_ "

"Orochimaru!" Jiraiya shouts, leaping in the direction of his old teammate with all the energy of one of his own toads. "Save me, Kushina-chan's been a bad influence on Minato-kun's student!"

"Who are you calling a bad influence?!" Kushina yells, peeling after Jiraiya across the emptying courtyard. In the distance, you see Orochimaru come to a stop, regard them coolly, and then turn and continue to walk away.

You fold the book closed and tuck it away with a sigh. You should just chuck it in Kamui for Obito to give back to Rin, honestly.

Kojiro chuckles, leaning forward on his crutches and folding his hand over the stump of his forearm. "If I were a responsible adult, I'd take that away from you," he says.

"I'm a jounin," you say. "I'd like to see you try. Besides, it's not mine, I borrowed it." Not that Rin should have had it, either, but it's not like anyone questioned you for going through her things. She'd named you and Minato as her next of kin after Obito.

(You don't attach a verb to that event, anymore. It's just 'after Obito,' because you can't risk slipping up and giving away his survival, but you can't bear lying to yourself and calling it his death, either.)

"Hey, I said if," Kojiro says, grinning. He shifts his weight and takes a step forward. It's strange to think that this man, smiling more than almost anyone you've ever known, could be the same sour-faced, dark-skinned boy in Minato's team picture. The only thing that's the same is his shaven-off hair. "You're coming to the celebration dinner, right?"

"I suppose," you hedge. In reality, you wouldn't be anywhere else, and you'll probably have your Sharingan active for a good portion of it, too, but it would be strange if you said that outright. It goes against the Kakashi people have come to expect from you.

(You've spent so much time trying to be the perfect shinobi that even you get surprised when you stop for long enough to acknowledge what you really want. It's gotten easier, since Obito, since Rin, since you had to come face to face with the fact that what you really wanted was the people who care about it.)

"Walk me over?" Kojiro asks. "Kushina-chan and Sensei will catch up eventually."

That much is true enough. Missing one leg and half an arm, Kojiro can't go anywhere at the typical speed of a shinobi anymore. It's an easy pace, almost too slow, but you nod and fall into step beside him.

He's also the easiest of your teachers' friends to get along with, for you personally, because he usually doesn't make you talk, and unlike Uchiha Mikoto, you don't feel like he's watching you because he wants something from you. Like Rin, Kojiro is a steadying presence.

Unfortunately, like Rin, he's also extremely perceptive.

"Do you think he's able to see what you see with that eye?"

"Hn," you hum in response, non-indicative of any particular opinion. It's close to on the nose, though. That's certainly how you felt when you kept it uncovered at the wedding, until late in the reception when you were in danger of passing out from chakra exhaustion. Your stamina with the Sharingan is better than it was even those eight months ago, but you're still glad for the break between the ceremony and the celebration.

"It's a nice thought, if you ask me," Kojiro says. "My mom was a civilian, and she had all kinds of weird superstitions about ninja. That sounds like exactly the kind of thing she'd believe."

"Hn," you say again. "If she was so superstitious about shinobi, why did she marry one?"

"She said that was part of the appeal," Kojiro says. "But really, my dad was civilian-born and they were neighbors as kids. That probably had more to do with it."

"Probably," you agree. "...It is a nice thought."

Actually, it gives you an idea for a jutsu. Your eye may never deactivate, but you've felt it tingle from time to time in a way that feels more like Obito's chakra than yours. If the two are somehow still connected...

Obito and Rin left for their final journey to Kiri a few days ago, which means that they're officially off the map even as far as you're concerned; no more hidden notes stashed away in Kamui. But making contact through your transplanted eye would be truly untraceable, wouldn't it? You put the idea into the back of your mind to play with later.

Kojiro smiles. "Just remember that even if your team is gone, your classmates will still have your back. You don't have to hang out with us old folks all the time."

"I barely know them," you say. Graduating as early as you did didn't exactly let you make the kinds of friendships among Academy peers that Rin had. "Also, you're not old."

"Never too late," Kojiro says. "Mikoto and I barely knew each other in the Academy, but we got pretty close after my injuries, you know?"

"I'll think about it," you say. If nothing else, maybe it wouldn't hurt, to have a social circle other than the adults in your life. Maybe you'll take Gai up on letting him drag you out somewhere to meet people.

Maybe it would give you a way to stop missing them.

(Is it really so different from them being dead, if you don't know if you'll ever be able to see them face to face again? You know it is, but at the same time, sometimes the thought catches up with you.)

Silence descends on you for most of the rest of the journey. You're going to the yakiniku place Sensei likes, because Ichiraku is both too predictable and too open - with everyone in the village wanting to give Minato their personal congratulations, any kind of private celebration would be impossible. The yakiniku place has a back room with enough space for the group to have a meal together. 

A block away, you run into Uchiha Mikoto, grinning and for once without Itachi in tow. "I'm glad I'm not late," she says. "Where's Kushina?"

"Chasing down Sensei," Kojiro replies without skipping a beat. "They made a good distraction for Kakashi-kun and I to get out of dodge. It looked like he was going to try and drag Orochimaru into it, too."

"Kushina won't let that happen," Mikoto says. "He's probably the only person who isn't celebrating tonight, not that I can blame him. Having your own teacher pass you up for the hat must be rough."

"Especially for one of Jiraiya-sensei's students," Kojiro agrees. "Don't get me wrong, Minato deserves it, but Sensei and Orochimaru haven't really gotten along since Tsunade left."

Mikoto sighs out her nose, and opens the restaurant door for Kojiro. "I know the feeling." As he passes her, she puts her eyes on you instead. "Sure you want to hang out with us, Kakashi?" she asks, a smile sliding back onto her face. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were avoiding me."

You've absolutely been avoiding her, but you also aren't going to tell her that to her face. "I've just been busy," you say.

"You've seen Kushina at least once a week since the war ended," Mikoto says, smile still so friendly that you can see the sharp point of it.

"That's for training," you say, and duck into the restaurant before you're obligated to say anything more, following Kojiro down the hall along the side of the restaurant to the room at the back.

It's not entirely a lie. You _have_ been training with Kushina, getting her to teach you sealing. Or, rather, she would give you some exercises to do on your own, and then you'd bring her your work a week later, but you're finding that the hands-off instruction suits you. Now that the war is over, you've been considering applying to Anbu just for something to _do_.

(According to what you've heard from Sensei, you're not the only one. Anbu recruitment over the last three months has spiked to the point that for the first time in the village's history, they've had to turn people _down_. There's not enough Anbu missions anymore, nor enough space to train that many new field agents.)

Maybe that's another reason to consider talking to the people who were all too briefly your Academy classmates. Most of them are still only chuunin, but you're all going to be equally lost without the war to give you purpose, aren't you?

Sensei opens the door when you arrive, grinning. "Come on in," he says. "Where's Kushina?"

"Probably still chasing Jiraiya," you say.

"She's providing an important diversion," Mikoto says behind you. 

Minato laughs, and ushers you all in, closing the door behind you. You sit awkwardly, Mikoto primly, and Kojiro with a sigh, peeling the securing straps of his crutch off his good arm with his teeth before resting his arm on the table. 

"I'm glad you could all make it," Minato-sensei says. "Even if it's just a small group, it feels like I haven't stopped since Kiri signed the treaty. Everyone else gets to rest on their laurels after the war, but..."

"The real work for you is just beginning, huh?" Kojiro says. "I don't envy you."

"That's because you're an underachiever," Mikoto says, and she says it so _properly_ that it takes you a minute to realize that she's teasing. Minato and Kojiro both chuckle. "Congratulations, Hokage-sama," she continues. "The Uchiha look forward to working with you in the future."

"And I look forward to working with you and all of our clans," Minato replies, and for a moment he actually looks like the Hokage, still wearing the jacket even if he's abandoned the hat. It only lasts for a moment, though, before he cracks a grin. "And now that we've got that over with, you can stop being the wife of the family head, right, 'Koto-chan?"

"Thank goodness," she says, slumping back in her seat. "And I told you not to call me that."

"You'll have to tell me again," Minato replies, "I must have forgotten. You know what an airhead I am."

Mikoto rolls her eyes and kicks him under the table. "You're just mad your own wife picked me as her plus-one instead of you."

"Don't be silly," Minato says. "You're family." He smiles at her, and then turns his attention to you. "Kakashi, how are you holding up? I know I haven't been able to be much of a teacher these last few months, but..."

"It's fine, Sensei," you say. "Kushina-san has been teaching me sealing."

"That's what she told me," Minato says, "but I still want to hear it from you: Are you okay?"

"I'll be fine," you say. "Just trying to stay busy."

It's pretty rare for him to touch you these days, but Minato reaches out and squeezes your shoulder before he sits down next to you, leaving the space between him and Mikoto open for Kushina. "Don't push yourself too hard," he says. "The last thing they'd want is for you to forget how to live."

"I won't," you say. The words wouldn't feel so much like a lie if you knew how to live like a normal person in the first place. "But I won't forget them, either."

Your sensei just nods, releasing your shoulder. Mikoto looks like she's going to say something, but Kojiro - the only one of the four of you who's really much of a sensor - looks at the door and says, "Incoming."

You look directly at the door and pull the forehead protector covering your eye up. If you were able to send images from it through to Obito, you know he wouldn't want to miss this.

(If you trail your fingers a little longer than you need to over the forehead protector that used to be Rin's, no one, not even Mikoto, is looking at you anymore.)

Sure enough, the door slams open, Kushina's fiery red hair and grin exploding out of it as she nearly knocks it off its hinges. "Okay, now we can start this party!" she says. "Jiraiya decided he wasn't coming, but he did send me with this - " She lifts a large bottle of sake by the neck with one hand. " - for the boys! You'd better enjoy it, because he actually got the fancy shit for once!"

"You're not drinking?" Minato asks, looking confused.

"Nope!" Kushina says. "Much as I'd like to, I got results back from the hospital today! Starting right now, I'm eating for two!"

Minato lights up and dives for his wife, wrapping her in his arms and giving her a deep kiss. She squeaks, and it's a good thing that you have your Sharingan uncovered, because it means that _you_ can flash across the room and catch the bottle of sake before it hits the floor. You sigh heavily and set it within Kojiro's reach.

"Nice catch," he says. "Grab the door, too?"

"Got it," you say, sliding around where Minato and Kushina have finally broken apart long enough to breathe and closing the unfortunate door. Hopefully none of the other patrons heard that exclamation, though you're not sure Kushina would _care_.

"Congratulations," Mikoto says, wrapping her arms around Kushina in a hug as soon as Minato lets go of her. "I'm happy for you."

"It'll be nice," Kushina says, more quietly. "Not being the last Uzumaki anymore, I mean." She catches your eye, and you give her a sympathetic look. You barely understand what it means to be the last of your clan, because you never knew any Hatake other than yourself and your father, but you understand _enough_. 

"You guys were a big clan, huh," Kojiro says. "I can't imagine more than one of you as it is, forget a clan the size of Mikoto's or the Hyuuga."

"It's been lonely," Kushina admits. "But all of that will change soon! We'll have a whole bushel of kids! The Academy will hate us for decades to come!" She pumps her fist in the air. "Now then, let's eat!"


	7. Other Side of the World III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being a jinchuuriki doesn't come with a how-to guide.
> 
> (Rin's assessment in Kiri goes surprisingly well.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kishimoto can't stop me from adding more cool ladies. The author is dead.

\----> Rin

After you're separated from Obito, even if it's only by a handful of rooms, your ability to keep a calm facade slips. You slide down to sit on your butt on the tatami floor, not even bothering to make your way away from the door.

This isn't an entirely unexpected meltdown, so you focus on your chakra, the feeling of all the power of the waves washing up against the seals inked in your skin. They're usually invisible, unless you actually use that chakra, but even though the bijuu hasn't properly woken up yet, it stirs more and more lately.

Kushina warned you to expect that, at least. You wish that you could have waited in Gakegakure until it actually did wake up, but you couldn't find any reason to delay things that long. Obito _would_ have, for your sake, but he'd do just about anything for you. He always has.

(You're willing to do just about anything in return, now, in a way you wouldn't have before. You lost him once, when he was an annoying teammate and a slightly less annoying friend. Not again.)

(He ripped a hole in the world to keep you safe. You can't do anything less.)

You twist yourself into a meditative position and close your eyes, breathing in and out with the motion of the waves inside you. It feels like the beginning of a storm, when the waves are just beginning to get dangerous, but you can control your breathing and so control the tide, evening it out breath by breath.

Ao knows. There's no way he doesn't know, after looking you over with a stolen Byakugan. The fact that he didn't react on the spot gives you more anxiety than if he had.

Waves in, waves out. There's nothing you can do about it right now. Take the fear away on the tide.

You open your eyes into the lagoon.

You're still aware, vaguely, of your body sitting in Kiri, somewhere in the distance, but most of your attention is here, on the place inside your seal, the lagoon surrounded by reefs. It's become a comforting place, where you're still _Rin_ instead of _Rei_ , and that's something that is only going to more and more be in short supply. 

The Sanbi is still asleep, its massive eye closed behind the bars of the cage. You would have felt it wake by now.

The water pushes around your ankles, pulls, drawing you forward, a wave of chakra rolling outward as spray flicks against your knees. The undertow in the real ocean, you know well enough by now, always pulls out to sea, but the undertow here always pulls towards that cage, rusted in some places and bound together by chains in others. It's the manifestation of the seal itself, designed to be on the edge of breaking and then held together by Kushina's repairs.

The water pulls you closer. You let yourself follow it, until you sit on the sandbar that accumulates just outside the cage, where it piles up around the Sanbi's body.

It's still asleep.

Isn't it?

You can't expect this lagoon to be perfectly reflective of the logic of the real world, but if the bijuu is still slumbering away inside its seal, why are its clawed feet on _top_ of the sand?

Kushina said that when the Kyuubi awakened in her, it did so with a fury that forced its chakra out through her every pore, that she could barely control. But the Kyuubi is a _wildfire_ , and you can't miss the burning of one of those, or tune it out. The Sanbi is like the ocean, and eventually, after you listen to the sound of the waves long enough, you stop hearing them.

You narrow your eyes. "You're awake, aren't you? You've been awake for a while."

Silence. True silence, or the closest thing to it, as the waves against the Sanbi and against your sandbar all go still. They still crash in the distance, around the edges of the lagoon, like the anxieties that still exist outside of the world of the seal, but in here, there is only stillness and your eyes on the creature before you.

It's as good as an acknowledgement. But the Sanbi does not reply, or open its eye. You fold your legs, brush sand off your knee, and wait.

And wait. There is the echo of a pull into sleep, tired as you are, but sleep is dropping beneath the waves of the lagoon, and you sit on the sandbar, where it won't reach you.

Above all, you are _patient_ , unbothered by the wait, like the ocean itself.

And then, slowly, that eye opens, with gleaming red, and a voice, a voice you can almost remember (screaming, in pain, like something you heard in a nightmare you forgot once you woke up, and maybe you did) says - 

" **Perceptive girl. What is it you want from me?** "

"Um..." You don't flinch under that regard, but it is more than a little awkward. "Nothing? At least, nothing right now," you clarify, because eventually, you might need - 

The sound of the waves begins again, agitated, as the Sanbi shifts on its claws. " **Then why did you come to this place?** "

"...It's peaceful here," you finally say. "I don't get a lot of peace."

That eye regards you for a moment longer, and then closes again. You doubt that the Sanbi has gone back to sleep, but you know the end of a conversation when it stares you in the face (or ceases to, as the case may be).

The waves return to normal, but you can't find that easy peace again, listening to them, knowing that you aren't alone anymore. Eventually, you close your eyes, and open them back up in your room in Kiri, to try to get some sleep.

\----

Rest helps. The fact that you aren't awakened in the middle of the night for interrogation also helps.

In the morning, there's a knock on your door, and you call out, "Come in!" even as Ao is already letting himself in. You wince slightly, wondering if you've made a mess of things somehow, but his expression doesn't change.

"We will speak after your assessment," is all he says. You can practically hear a _if you live_ tacked on, and you suppose that makes good enough sense. No point in wasting his time if you die.

You nod, not trusting your voice, and he continues, "Someone will come for you within two hours." Then he closes the door and leaves, and you feel his chakra signature fade away, not quite disappearing, into the building's basement.

About ten minutes later, an unknown shinobi comes and collects Obito from his room. He flares his chakra twice as he goes past your door, and you respond in kind, for luck, for hope.

You sit and try to meditate again while you wait, but it's hard to not drop back into the lagoon, and you don't want to go back there yet, so it's not as effective at easing your nerves as it could be. 

It's well over an hour before your door opens again. This time, it isn't Ao, but an unfamiliar woman in a jounin vest over a white robe. She has bone-white hair and small clan markings on her forehead - you're not familiar with them, but you're not familiar with most of the clans that call Kirigakure home. Only the ice-wielding Yuki clan was ever significant enough to have their reputation reach you, and from what you've heard, most of them died out in the war.

The Anbu woman with the gills is there as well, but at a good distance behind the new arrival. she's wearing a different mask and a slightly different skin tone; you only recognize her by her chakra signature.

"Gakegakure Reiko," the new woman says. "I am Kaguya Kinoka, and you will accompany me for your assessment."

You nod and stand. "Thank you for your time, Kaguya-san," you say, dipping a slight bow.

"Don't thank me yet," she says, with a bit of humor that makes you realize that she's at most two years older than you, but carries herself with authority and poise that reminds you of Uchiha Mikoto. Definitely from one of Kiri's clans. "If you survive, you'll hate me by the end of it."

"I doubt that," you say, falling into step behind her as she leads you down through the building. The Anbu closes in behind you, just far enough from being on your heels that you don't feel her breathing down your neck. "I save my hate for people who deserve it."

"Spoken like a shinobi worth my time," Kaguya says, and then silence settles over you for the rest of the walk. She leads you down past a jounin lounging on a staircase, and then further into the basement, not coming to a stop until you're in front of a door well underground. You shuffle inside at her gesture, and she and the Anbu follow.

You're not sure what you expected, but the small sparring arena isn't it. It's not big enough for anything particularly flashy, but not cramped, either.

More to the point, when you let your chakra sense expand, you can sense Ao almost directly overhead. So he's watching from there, likely with his Byakugan. That's fine.

You join Kaguya in the center of the arena, leaving your Anbu escort leaning against the wall at the door.

"I understand that you are a medic," she says. "Your first assessment will be regarding your ability to heal under stress. Give me your arm."

Oh, you can already feel how much this is going to suck. But you can see the twisted logic behind it, too, and so you give her your dominant arm instead of your left, hoping that whatever she intends to do to it isn't too painful.

(A healer who can't heal themselves is worthless on the battlefield.)

Kaguya steps closer to you - she's tall enough to be intimidating, up close, why is everyone in Kiri so _tall_ \- and runs her hand carefully up and down your arm. There's a faint tingle of chakra under her fingers. You wonder if she's a medic herself, and that's why she was chosen to assess you.

And then she adds her second hand, and does something with her chakra, but you don't have the time to assess what before you hear the _snap_ of breaking bone. The pain almost, _almost_ makes you scream, and you've definitely gotten the edge of your lip keeping the sound contained to a pained grunt, because you taste blood in your mouth.

"Treat it," she says, neither kindly nor cruelly, and you manage to nod before you reach up to feel the break.

You wish you'd given her your left hand.

It's a clean break, with no bone breaking through the skin - she clearly knew what she was doing. You push the two broken ends of bone back onto their counterparts, loosely at first, and then more securely as you join them together with a weaving of chakra. The Sanbi's chakra wants to bubble up underneath yours, and you remember what Kushina told you about jinchuuriki regeneration, but you don't allow it to take hold. Even if Ao knows, there's no telling if he's told anyone else, and you won't out yourself until you must.

Plus, Obito would feel it, and you don't intend to accidentally signal him for an emergency escape over a mere broken arm.

So you weave your bones back together, only stopping once to nudge your ulna into a better position, ignoring the pain as best you can. It takes ten, maybe fifteen minutes, because bone is the slowest thing to grow in the body and so the slowest thing to heal, even when you're accelerating the healing with chakra. When you're done with the bones, you stop long enough to take a breath, and then grit your teeth again to repair the muscle around the break. Slowly, the pain fades, along with the bruising, until there's little more than an ache in your arm.

You think you can feel the Sanbi's attention on you directly. You ignore it the same way you do the stare of the Anbu behind you and the woman in front of you.

But when you look up, Kaguya's eyes - a pale purple that add to the growing impression of ghostliness around her - are just a hair wider, and she looks grudgingly impressed.

"I expected you to splint it," she says. She reaches out again for your arm, and you give her hand a suspicious look as you allow it. She squeezes the still tender flesh, presses on the location of the break, and withdraws her hand when she's satisfied. There's something like a smile there. "For one who has never seen their own bones, this is a good repair," she declares.

You choose to ignore the ominousness of the first half of that statement, and instead say, "Thank you, Kaguya-san."

"I find no need to further assess your medical abilities," she says, sounding not displeased. "They told me I would be assessing a chuunin, so I was prepared for disappointment."

You feel your cheeks color slightly, but manage a smile. You can do without any further medical assessments if they're like that, though you won't tell her so to her face. Still, something about the bluntness of her manner puts you more at ease. "I don't think I hate you yet," you say.

"Ah," she says. "Well, there is still time for that. Now that I have seen how you heal, I need to see how you dance."

The question is in your mind and, you're sure, your expression, but you don't get the chance to form the words _what do you mean, dance?_ before what she means becomes immediately very clear. Fingers splayed, she cocks her head and threads chakra into her fingertips, letting you watch as claws - no, the tips of her _fingerbones_ \- break the skin, and then she charges you.

You backstep, turning your side towards her and letting her overshoot. She doesn't go far, her momentum taking her into a spin so that she can lash out at you with the other hand. You can guess why she described the fight as a dance - she's certainly graceful enough, short-cut white hair flaring around her head. You snap a few senbon out of your wrist holster and throw them, testing her defenses, and she swats them out of the air easily. The only one she misses wasn't going to hit anyway, and harmlessly bounces off the sleeve of her robe.

It's probably a silk robe, too. Stabbing through silk is a _bitch_ , and close to pointless with senbon at the speed she's moving. You switch to the kunai strapped to your thigh, and her bone-claws glance off the edge of the blade hard enough to spark. You trade a few blows with her like that, pure taijutsu and speed, before leaping back. She's not as fast as Kakashi, but she could definitely put Obito through his paces, and most people in Konoha know the Uchiha reputation for speed only second to their Sharingan.

It doesn't matter all that much, considering that both of your teammates are faster than you. You've always traded speed for precision and accuracy - Kakashi can hit something four times in the time it takes you to land one hit, Obito two or three if he's lucky, but your hit will be exactly where it needs to be to slow your opponent down to a speed you can manage.

It's going to be hard to do that with Kaguya, though, and it takes you a moment to finger why. If you hadn't been sparring with Obito for the last six months near-exclusively, you probably wouldn't have noticed. It isn't just the bones at her fingertips - no part of her moves quite _right_ , and you bet whatever ability that is extends to all her bones. 

With that thought in mind, you let her come to you, leaving a false opening so that you can slice your kunai at her shoulder. You're not quite quick enough to stop her, but fast enough to confirm your hypothesis - you slice through silk, an initial layer of skin, and then hit a layer of bone where bone shouldn't be and bounce off. It costs you a series of scratches on your side that bleed wickedly but don't really hurt, in comparison to your broken arm before. 

You float chakra through the wounds carefully, more to close them before the bijuu chakra does than for any other reason. Again you get the sensation of being watched from within your own mind, but you can't afford to let it distract you now.

Kaguya hums to herself, glancing down at your healing side. "Efficient," is her only comment, before springing at you again. You push back with a bit more fervor this time, catching her claws against your kunai and slicing some skin off her hand.

Damn that robe. You have an idea of how to beat her, but without being able to get your senbon in, you'll never be able to pull it off. So you take a deep breath and throw kunai at her feet, two-three-four one after the other, just to drive her back enough that you have room to flash your fingers through the signs of a fire jutsu.

Hopefully, with so many of their shinobi specializing in water jutsu, they don't know how to treat their silks to be fire resistant, the way the clans in Konoha do. It's worth a try, at least. 

The fireball takes form between your hands, and you blow more chakra into it before setting it loose. Kaguya, unsurprisingly, dodges the large one, but the flames stay wreathed around your hands, and _those_ , when you throw them off your fingers, catch her in the arm and the hip. You pour more chakra in, and watch in satisfaction as the robe lights up, costing Kaguya one sleeve and most of the fabric below her waist before she's able to make the seals for a jutsu that calls a small cascade of water down over her own head.

Of course, then you're dodging the water pooled around your feet as it swings at you with a life of its own, but a few more seals and the ground swallows the liquid into an earth jutsu. From Kaguya's expression, you just went up a notch or two in her estimation. 

It's the Anbu you feel watching you, this time, but you don't stop to consider her, either. You plan your targets - elbow and shoulder joints, leg down to the knees. You're about to charge in when Kaguya grins, the kind of monster grins Kirigakure shinobi are famous for, and _shoots her fingertips at you _.__

__"What the _hell_ ," you shout, jumping out of the way and landing on the wall, chakra keeping your feet in place. One of the bone projectiles hits your thigh and goes almost all the way in. It hurts, but you can't afford to spend the time and chakra healing a deep puncture right now, so you leave it where it is._ _

__You use your chakra to stem the flow of blood down your leg as best you can, and pull more senbon from your thigh holster. You feel the tiny, narrow seal markings carved into them, easily missed by any other shinobi. Kakashi made them for you as a going-away present, his careful eye spotting every detail to produce flawless carvings. In your other hand, you grip a kunai to deflect her blows._ _

__"That's for ruining my robe!" Kaguya calls. "It was one of my favorites!"_ _

__"Then you shouldn't have worn it to a fight!" you call back, and jump off the wall at her, putting all the speed you _do_ have with your good leg into jumping at her. She meets you in the air, and you knock her claws wide with your kunai to wedge a pair of senbon deep in her exposed elbow. She hisses, but as you'd thought, she can't armor her joints with bone without losing the ability to move effectively._ _

__You leave a scrap of chakra hooked to the senbon and make an attempt at your secondary target, trying to kick her feet out from under her before she lands, but the both of you land on your feet. It's closer to her than you'd like to be, with your bad leg, but you accept that from here on, you're going to have to go on the defensive and wait for her to come to you._ _

__You just need to get one senbon in her right leg, opposite the ones in her arm. That's it. Then you can activate the threads of chakra hooked to them and it'll all be over._ _

__Kaguya smiles, and another piece of bone juts out from her wrist. You watch, morbidly fascinated, as she pulls a short sword made of bone out of her bad arm, spinning it flawlessly in her grip. You know better than to hope that she's not trained in its use; Kiri has an infamous history of swordsmanship, after all._ _

__The thought crosses your mind that you are absolutely _boned_ , and you think you hear the Sanbi _laugh_. _ _

__One senbon. That's all you need._ _

__You don't wait for her to come to you. You charge, full-body, slamming into her and trapping the sword between your bodies. Only your kunai keeps her from swinging it upwards and into your neck, and you have to brace your hand against your jaw to do it. Her other hand, even with its limited range of motion, gets bone claws into your side, the angle too awkward to be more than superficial. Even so, you can tell that if she _had_ free motion in that arm, it would have been four claws _perfectly_ between your ribs, with the kind of precision that only a medic or apparently someone with _bone manipulation powers_ could manage._ _

__But you get your senbon into her leg, in a gap of bone between her thigh and her hip, and that's what you needed._ _

__She springs away from you, twirling with that sword, and there's no time to think about what you're doing - you snap your fingers, dropping the kunai, and calling lightning chakra to your hands. It snaps from your fingertips to the senbon embedded in her arm and shoulder, and flows through her body - arm to shoulder to heart to stomach to hip and back out again._ _

__Midway through shifting her stance to charge you with her blade, her eyes widen. You give her a triumphant smirk, wait just long enough for her to know she's lost, and slam your hands together._ _

__A thunderclap of noise echoes in the arena, and lightning shoots through Kaguya's body. There's a cut-off scream and then she collapses, unconscious, to the floor, bone sword tumbling from her hand._ _

__You heave a deep sigh and reach down to yank the bone projectile from your leg and heal it. While you're doing that, the Anbu steps forward, to examine Kaguya's body._ _

__"You didn't kill her."_ _

__It takes a moment, through the pain, to realize the words are directed at you. "...Do you want me to?" you ask the Anbu. You will, if that's what's required to secure your place in Kiri - you're no stranger to death, anymore, and that technique is _designed_ to kill. You put a lot less chakra into it than you could have._ _

__"That will not be required," the Anbu replies. She arranges Kaguya's body on the floor, removing the senbon, and returning them to you. You take them with some hesitation. You wonder if the Anbu noticed the carvings._ _

__"You will wait here until Ao-sama arrives," the Anbu says. "You may finish healing yourself, but you will not heal your opponent."_ _

__"Understood," you say, tucking the bloodied senbon away. The Anbu watches you a moment longer, and then vanishes._ _

__With nothing else to do, you sit next to Kaguya, resting your hands on your knees, and wait. Above you, you feel a faint spike of Obito's chakra, and then a heavy wave of someone else's - it seems like he's fighting his own battle. You're sure he'll be fine, and a few minutes later, your faith is seemingly rewarded as he makes his way over to where Ao stands. His opponent (kami, that's a terrifying amount of chakra, even to a jinchuuriki) follows at a much slower pace after him._ _

__Not dead, then, but probably injured. You sigh out your nose, as you feel Ao vanish from above you. He's probably on his way here._ _

___**You didn't use my chakra. You didn't even reach for it.** _ _ _

__You're too worn to be startled at the voice in your mind. _I didn't need it_ , you say to the Sanbi. _ _

___**Even if you had, you wouldn't have touched it** ,_ it replies. _**You're an interesting one, little healer.**_ _ _

__You feel Ao outside the door, and lift yourself up to stand. Your leg is far more deeply sore than your recently broken arm. _You're not the only one who thinks so,_ you tell the bijuu, bowing before Ao before you look him in the eye._ _

__He takes in the sight of you, of Kaguya spread out on the floor breathing shallowly, and says, "You didn't use its chakra once. Even to heal yourself."_ _

__"No, sir," you say._ _

__A frown. "I'm not an idiot. I was a part of the invasion of Uzushio; I know an Uzumaki's work when I see it."_ _

__You gulp, and don't say anything._ _

__Ao watches you for a moment, and then he says, "And I know what the Uzumaki were like. They have every reason to want revenge, but they wouldn't send a child to do it." His eye narrows. "Even if releasing a bijuu into the center of the city would accomplish it neatly."_ _

__"I..." You take a deep breath. There's no point in denying your connection to Uzushio, is there? "I'm not here to avenge Uzushiogakure," you say. "I just want to find out what happened to it."_ _

__Ao doesn't look convinced. "The boy as well?"_ _

__"Yes, sir," you say. "We really are genin teammates. Our sensei was from Uzushio."_ _

__Ao considers you again. You thought dealing with the stare of real Hyuuga was uncomfortable; somehow, being under the gaze of a Byakugan you can't actually see is worse. "How long have you been a jinchuuriki?"_ _

__"A little over six months, sir," you say._ _

___That_ gets you a look of faint surprise, which turns into amusement. "You must have the best chakra control in generations, then," Ao says. "A jinchuuriki _medic_. The Rokubi boy has been a jinchuuriki for four years and can't filter his chakra from the beast's half as well as you. And the Rokubi is the one of Kiri's bijuu that's better for technical use; the Sanbi is a destructive force and little else."_ _

__Against your seal, something shifts. _ **It's hardly my fault if no one from Kiri bothered to find out what my powers are,**_ the Sanbi says. You give it the silent equivalent of a finger to your lips, a gesture for quiet._ _

__Finally, Ao says, "Your comrade made an impressive showing in his assessment. If it were not for the added complication of your status as a jinchuuriki, I would have no problem recommending you both as jounin."_ _

__You jerk to alertness. " _Jounin_?" you repeat, shocked down to your core. You knew that you had risen above the level of normal chuunin, and certainly Obito's grown in ridiculous leaps since his octopus escape, but you didn't think you were up to the same level as him and Kakashi._ _

__Ao nods, and then says, "You went to the trouble of hiding your bijuu thus far. See that it _stays_ hidden, because no one will protect you if they find out about it."_ _

__"Yes, sir," you say._ _

__"You and your companion will be given a probationary period of one year as speciality jounin," Ao says. "After that, when you are given your full ranking, I expect you to apply to the Anbu division. The hunter-nin could use someone of your power and control."_ _

__It isn't a suggestion. You shudder, but nod._ _

__Ao reaches into his pack and pulls out a strip of metal and fabric. You offer your hands, accepting the forehead protector he places there solemnly._ _

__"Get Kaguya to the hospital," he says. "Your partner should already be there, so it shouldn't be difficult to find if you're anywhere near decent as a sensor. Dismissed."_ _

__You bow, and stay that way until he disappears in a swirl of mist. Then you sigh, strapping the forehead protector around your waist. It feels strange to not wear it over your forehead, but that makes you look too much like Rin, and for all you know, the Kiri nin who were a part of your brief capture are still alive in the village somewhere._ _

__"This is a mess," you tell the unconscious woman in front of you. You kneel down beside her and start sensing your way through her injuries - you might not be able to treat everything, but this will be much easier if you can get her back to consciousness. Considering all the extra bone she seems to have, she probably weighs far more than her slim build would indicate._ _

__Fortunately, her heart is beating a bit slowly but normally, and you can't find any severe damage from the shock. You close up the flesh wounds, then trickle your chakra into her nervous system to wake her, and step back._ _

__She jerks awake as violently as you predicted, striking out with one bare hand before she realizes what's going on and that she isn't holding her sword anymore. A breath, two, and then she turns to stare at you._ _

__"You healed me," she says, clearly confused. Her hair, impeccable throughout the battle, is now a mess from leftover static._ _

__"Ao-san told me to take you to the hospital," you say. "I thought it would be easier if you could provide at least some of your own power."_ _

__Kaguya seems to consider this, and then says, more quietly, "You didn't kill me."_ _

__"I'm not in the habit of killing future comrades," you say, equally quietly. "Even if they tell me I'm going to hate them."_ _

__She barks a laugh, rubbing her hand over her face. "No Kiri shinobi would have held back, you realize," she says._ _

__"Well, as you might remember, Kaguya-san, I wasn't a Kiri shinobi when I knocked you out," you say. "So that doesn't count."_ _

__"Call me Kinoka," she replies, meeting your eyes. She waits for your nod before she continues, "Don't go doing it again. In Kiri, choosing to spare someone you could have killed causes them to owe you a life debt, and people aren't fond of anyone they think is hoarding life debts. Even medics." She frowns, the clan marks on her forehead scrunching. "Especially medics. Around here, you'll be expected to ignore the dying to get people who will recover on their own back to the fighting faster, so it is better for you to get used to the idea now."_ _

__You don't like it, but you can see a certain logic in it. "Kirigakure cares more about winning than lives," you say. "I'll remember."_ _

__You don't make any promises to hold to that philosophy, if you have to choose between saving someone and letting them die, but you'll remember. Life debts between shinobi are a serious matter, no matter what village you're in._ _

__The fact that it means that Kinoka now owes _you_ a life debt, under Kiri's rules, doesn't escape you, either. But you can figure out how you feel about that later. Instead, you offer her your hand and pull her to her feet when she takes it._ _

__There's a wobble, and she catches herself on your shoulder. "I think I may be done dancing for today, Reiko-san," she says, smiling that slightly vicious smile._ _

__"You should still go to the hospital," you agree. "And please, call me Rei. I hate being called Reiko." It's a little quirk that adds depth to your cover, something real people would do._ _

__"Rei it is," Kinoka agrees, and she lets you lead her up the stairs out of jounin headquarters._ _

__You leave with the distinct impression that you've somehow made a friend. You hope Obito's assessment went half as well._ _


	8. Other Side of the World IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Making friends and influencing clan heirs: Kirigakure edition.
> 
> (Or: Their first night as Kiri shinobi is spent in a clan house, and in the ever-obnoxious arena of ninja politics, that means something.)

The hospital is easy enough to find, especially with Kinoka leaning on your shoulder to give you directions. By the time you get there, she can mostly walk on her own, but you still want her to get examined for nerve damage.

"I am more confident in your treatment than theirs," she says. "The medics here do not know bones."

"It's not your bones I'm worried about," you tell her as the doors slide open.

Immediately - 

"Rei! Are you okay?"

Obito bounces forward from where he's sitting in the waiting area over to you, so fast that it's hard to believe he actually crossed the space physically. You sigh.

"I'm fine, Tobi," you say, pushing lightly on his chest to get him out of your way. "I healed myself already. What about you?"

"Eh, some bruises, a little cut," he says. He tries to shrug you off, but winces mid-shrug. You can guess where the bruises are. "Kisame's worse off, I pinned his foot to the floor with a kunai."

You lean past him to look at his companion, who has a bandaged foot and a braced wrist besides. The man is huge and blue-skinned, but you can't be surprised by anything at this point. There's a wide black ink stain over most of his face.

He waves with his good hand. You blink, and wave back with the arm that isn't supporting Kinoka.

"You haven't been seen yet?" you say, frowning. "I'll see what I can do. Kinoka, will you be okay if I...?"

"I will be fine," she says, lifting her weight off your shoulder and walking to a seat next to Kisame. Somehow she manages to make it look stately, which makes you feel better about her recovery. "Hoshigaki," she greets as she sits, cool veneer back in place.

"Kaguya," he says, with a friendly shark-grin. "These new recruits are something, huh?"

"So it seems," she says. 

You glance at Obito, but he just grins at you, going back over to take up his seat next to Kisame. You'll pry the whole story out of him later; for right now, you have a patient. You sit on the floor in front of Kisame with a sigh.

"Let's get a look at this," you say, pulling off the sandal securing the bandages. They're wrapped nice and tight, at least, but you're not looking forward to the blood clots that are going to be underneath. "Please tell me you didn't try to walk on this," you say.

"Oops," Kisame says, completely unapologetic.

You sigh loudly. Great, he's as bad as Kakashi, just more cheerful about it. No wonder Obito already seems to like him. You unwrap the bandages and concentrate your chakra, recreating tissue from the inside out. By the time you're done, you can feel a number of eyes on your back, but you ignore them with and grin. "There, that should do it. Just be gentle on it for a few days. I don't want to have to redo that ligament because you were too rough with it, I hate the foot ligaments."

Kisame's grin has slipped into a more serious expression, and he tests the motion of the foot before putting it back on the floor. "Feels good," he says. "Better treatment than I normally get around here." That last is levelled in the direction of the intake medic, who glares at your side of the waiting room and goes back to his paperwork.

"Let's see that wrist, then," you say. From your initial examination, there's a couple other wounds, but if you're prioritizing getting people _functional_ again, the wrist is what really needs attention. Kisame flinches when you probe it deeper than a surface-level touch, and you can't blame him. "Tobi, what the hell did you do to this? It's shattered to bits."

"...Squeezed it?" Obito offers meekly, retreating from your gaze. The spots on his skin widen, as though he could somehow blend into the waiting room furniture and escape your wrath. "Really hard?"

Kinoka laughs. It's piercing and sounds more like something you'd hear from the character of a noblewoman in a theater than a real laugh. "I think I like you."

"Run now," Kisame advises Obito, wincing again as you move the bones of his wrist around. "She'll ask you to dance next, and you never know with a Kaguya if that means actually dancing or trying to murder each other."

"Ideally, both," Kinoka agrees without hesitation.

You sigh again, because these are apparently your friends now, so you'll have to get used to a Kirigakure level of casual bloodthirst. "I'm going to use a jutsu that draws mostly from your chakra instead of mine," you tell Kisame. "My reserves are good, but this many bones in one day is pushing my limit, and it looks like you have chakra to spare."

"Fine with me," he says, giving you that shark grin again. You nod and close your eyes, finding the well of chakra underneath and guiding it into healing. You have to go even more slowly, bone by bone, since the wrist is such a delicate ( _pain in the ass_ ) joint. While you work, you hear the three of them continue to banter, but you let it wash over you without breaking your concentration.

When you open your eyes again, Obito has reached his arm over Kisame's and is doing the _thing_ with his fingers again, bending them backwards over the back of his hand as he dislocates his joints. Kisame looks a little more green than blue at the sight, but Kinoka is examining his hand eagerly, her longer fingers running between Obito's.

"Please stop doing the thing with your hand when I'm trying to treat a patient, Tobi," you say as blandly as possible before releasing Kisame's wrist.

"Why?" Kinoka asks. "It is a magnificent demonstration."

"No, I'm with the medic on this one," Kisame says.

Obito just laughs, curling his fingers back the way they _should_ go and out of Kinoka's hand. "Sorry, sorry," he says. "She knows where I sleep, you know?"

Both Kiri-nin nod like that's a perfectly logical explanation. Then again, to them, it probably is. You sigh, and move your hand up to the senbon holes in Kisame's arm - you don't need the help of his chakra for this, or even that much concentration. Thin puncture wounds like needles are easy to heal; hypodermic needle insertions were the first thing you were trained on.

" _I_ don't even know where I sleep," you say. "Do we get an apartment assignment, or something?" you ask the two natives.

"If Ao-sama didn't give you one, you can stay with me for the night," Kinoka says.

"You might have to go back by the office to get it in the morning," Kisame says. "I can show you where, I have to write up my report anyway."

Obito makes a face, puffing out his cheeks. "I hate bureaucracy. Best thing about living in a ruin was not dealing with it."

"I wouldn't want to impose," you say to Kinoka. "We can handle it for one night."

Kinoka shakes her head. "It is no imposition. Our clan does not have guests often."

"Then I think we'll have to take you up on that," you finally say, bowing.

"Then I'll swing by the Kaguya compound for you in the morning," Kisame says. He stretches his arm, ties his sandal back on, and stands. "No point in me sticking around here," he says, giving you a smile that shows _slightly_ less of his teeth than the earlier, bloodthirsty one. You smile back, and he turns towards the desk shinobi. "Hey, Michikawa! I'm all patched up so I'm leaving!"

"Fine," the shinobi at the desk says. He looks bored. "The rest of you get out too, then. Get the Kaguya medics to look at you."

You frown, but Kinoka looks like it was expected, and stands gracefully to follow Kisame. You catch Obito's eye, and he shrugs again before wincing. " _I think it's clan stuff_ ," he mouths.

You resist the urge to groan, because you are a professional shinobi. Of course. You figured Kinoka's bones had to be some kind of clan ability, but you had really hoped that you'd escaped the worst of the clan nonsense now that you no longer have to jump through four Uchiha security hoops just to visit Obito at his own home.

Still, you follow after Kinoka without complaint, and Obito follows you, and that's the end of it.

\----

"I didn't want to say anything, because your intentions were good," she says some time after the three of you are well out of range of the hospital. "But many of the medics at the hospital would not treat me unless it was life or death, nor most of my clan, nor Hoshigaki and his clan."

At least she seems to be moving without trouble now, all elegant conservation of motion. You keep a medic's eye on her even so, ready to jump in if she stumbles. "May I ask why?" you say.

"In our case, it is because of our bones," she says. " _Apparently_ the way our chakra grows into them makes us difficult to treat, even in those members who do not manifest the full form of our kekkai genkai. In Hoshigaki, I imagine it's the abnormal respiration and other traits of being a summoning clan."

She turns to Obito and adds, "You are lucky to have comradery with such a skilled medic. Even if you are not from a clan, I imagine they would not treat you, either."

He just sighs, nodding. "Kisame already warned that I probably can't escape clan politics," he says.

Kinoka nods. "It is a bad time to be a clan member in Kirigakure. Our own leader fears us, to the point that he had the main family of the Yuki clan wiped out." There's tension in her shoulders, and she toys with the remaining sleeve of her robe as she walks. "It was a message to all of us."

"To keep you in line," you say. You grimace. "I'm sorry, Kinoka. I didn't realize."

Kinoka shakes her head. "It is nothing. Presenting a unified front to our enemies is the highest priority for our shinobi. It is only within the village that these tensions reveal themselves. You could not have known."

The three of you walk in silence for some time. As you walk, you notice that the roads you're on, although as clean as those near the city center, are in less repair, with paving cracked and tilted at the kinds of angles that could trip anyone who wasn't paying attention and didn't have the reflexes of a shinobi. You're already sensitive to the fact that this is a shinobi part of town, and near the water, the smell of the harbor strong, but you realize that this must be the clan part of town.

It's the total opposite of the clan section of Konoha. There, the traditional properties are bordered by natural spaces, creating a buffer between the families with the forest that already existed and the trees grown by the First Hokage when he created the village. In Kiri, the properties are perfectly manicured, without even the smallest sense of wilderness, and the borders between them are stark, traditional stone walls with roofing tiles in clan colors. But the streets in Konoha were always well-maintained, wide and open, while here they feel almost cramped.

"What kind of clan were the Yuki?" Obito asks. "I don't think I've heard of them."

"They were Kirigakure's main elemental release clan, and one of the founding clans," Kinoka says. "Their ice jutsu made them especially powerful when we went up against Kumogakure's mountain clans, and it was only found within their clan, unlike the steam release of the Terumi family."

Family, not clan. You wonder what the difference is, here; in Konoha a family was just a group of related ninja without the history and formality of a clan, but you're learning quickly that you shouldn't assume that applies in Kiri.

"And they were completely wiped out?" you ask.

"Perhaps not completely," Kinoka says, "but any survivors are long gone from this village. There is still an outstanding reward for anyone who finds a survivor, and it has been fifteen years since the clan was eliminated. Even their clan house was put to the torch."

And she draws to a stop and points down a slim street, in even worse repair than the rest. "At the end of that road. You can still see the ruins; the clan had Uzumaki seals protecting their grounds, and now those seals behave so erratically that it is too dangerous for anyone to reclaim the property."

"Even after fifteen years..." you say, squinting down the lane. But it is growing dark enough that you can't see anything more than the general shape of more traditional buildings.

Kinoka nods. "Their loss weakened the position of my clan, as well. The Yuki and Kaguya had a long history of alliance. Our properties bordered each other in the rear; we have had to abandon much of that section due to the risks of the seal discharge. There are no Uzumaki who can restore it to a liveable state anymore, either."

You consider correcting her, but she's right - even if the Uzumaki aren't _dead_ , there's no way Kushina would be allowed to come fix up a Kirigakure property, even if she wanted to.

"Maybe I can take a look at it some time," Obito says. "We learned a bit about sealing from our sensei."

Kinoka laughs. "As long as you know the risks, I will not stop you. But I do not expect much. Come, my clan house is only a little further on."

The two of you follow her down to the next road, which isn't so much a road as an entrance as wide as one. You only don't hesitate because the entrance to the Uchiha complex is equally as intimidating, but you still can't help glancing around continuously. Except for the fact that the buildings have exteriors of brick and stone instead of wood, it even _looks_ like the Uchiha compound, complete with black-haired clansfolk in dark kimono walking around to light the evening lanterns.

You glance at Obito to see how he's holding up, and his expression of awed discomfort at least matches what someone might expect from someone from a small village who isn't a member of any clan. _You_ know it's from the unexpected familiarity, but no one else will.

They even _look_ a little like the Uchiha. You hadn't noticed it on Kinoka until now, the haughty cheekbones, sharp jaw, and vague androgyny, but it must be because her coloring is so opposite to the Uchiha. Most of her clansmen, it seems, are similarly dark-haired. You do spot a few other heads of white hair, but they seem to be less common.

Every single person, even the pair of children (both dark-haired) running between the houses, moves like a shinobi. It would definitely be more uncomfortable if you weren't used to the Uchiha.

Kinoka leads you to the back of the compound, to what you know must be the main house, and ushers you inside. As you'd half-expected, the interior is more like you'd expected, wood and tatami mats and paper walls that look at least as old as you are. There's enough chakra-ink along the edges that you know there must be seals all over the paper.

"Wait here for a moment," Kinoka says, before disappearing behind the divider. No sound escapes, though you sense three more chakra presences on the other side, including what must be a toddler in the arms of one of their parents.

" _Is she the heir?_ " Obito whispers, eyes wide behind his goggles. 

"She can't be," you whisper back. "Surely Ao-san wouldn't send the heir of a clan to test unknown shinobi like that..."

"Not where we come from," Obito replies. "In Kiri?"

You don't have an answer for that, at least not by the time the door slides open again. The chakra presence holding the child has retreated further into the house, but next to Kinoka stands a man with equally white hair and a similarly lengthened, thin build. The only thing other than his age (somewhere between five and eight years older than Kinoka) that separates them is that his eyes are much more distinctly blue.

Given the formal kimono he's wearing, you can guess his position even before Kinoka introduces him as, "My elder brother and the next clan head, Kaguya Kirigaya."

Obito bows, and you follow his example, trusting that his sense of clan decorum is probably better than yours even if you have rarely seen him use it.. "Thank you for permitting us to stay, Kaguya-sama," Obito says smoothly.

Kirigaya gives you a small bow in return. "Thank you for returning my sister unharmed," he replies. "It is not often that she comes back from such a fierce dance with only a burnt robe."

She must have told him about your fight, then. You manage a nervous smile. "It was an honor. Kinoka pushed me to my limits."

Kirigaya looks pleased by your response. "We only find the border of those limits by pushing against them. Please, come inside for a meal, and I will have rooms prepared for you."

You nod and step into the house, Obito following after you.

\----

Dinner is a normal enough affair, not nearly as formal as you'd feared. The only oddities about it are Kinoka asking Obito to demonstrate his hand thing for her brother and his wife, and the constant niggling feeling that the bone chopsticks everyone is using are made of the bones of someone from the clan, if not one of the people at the table. Their son, Kimimaro, is a quiet, dark-haired child, but he seems to take an immediate liking to both you and Obito, and his mother nearly has to pry him away from your side to put him to bed.

"It would have been more awkward if Father had attended," Kinoka says, once her brother's family has left. "But he often skips dinner to eat in his study, busy with clan business."

"Is your father clan head?" Obito asks.

"He is," Kinoka says, "but likely not for much longer. Kirigaya is prepared to take over for him, and will probably do so within the next year, now that the war has ended."

"May I ask a strange question?" you say. "Why do only a few members of your clan have white hair? I thought shinobi coloring was normally similar within a clan."

"The white hair is linked to our bloodline trait," Kinoka says. "It grows black until our gift manifests, usually at the onset of puberty."

About the same time as the Sharigan, then. You nod, accepting the answer. "So not everyone in the clan has the bloodline power?"

"Only about a quarter," Kinoka agrees. "By birth, it is closer to a third, but those of us with the bloodline trait are often sent to where fighting is fiercest. Kirigaya and I have another brother between us, Kizashi, who did not manifest it; he moved out of the main house when he married."

"It's a big clan," Obito says.

"The largest in Kirigakure," Kinoka says, squaring up her shoulders with pride. "And the fiercest, though to many that means the same as being bloodthirsty. The summoning clans together number more than we do, but they rarely move as one."

That makes Kinoka the younger sister of the most powerful clan head in Kiri. At least as far as clan politics, you've made a powerful ally. You wonder where Kisame falls on that hierarchy; you assume the Hoshigaki must be one of the summoning clans, from how Kinoka had folded Obito in with them. Did all the summoners in Kiri have weird contracts like his that alter their bodies?

If they do, that would explain why the medics are reluctant to treat them, even outside the apparent separation between normal shinobi and clan shinobi. You've had to start nearby from the ground up on his circulation and nervous systems, with how different they've become from those of normal humans.

"And the clans all have their own medics?" you ask.

Kinoka nods. "Some of the smaller families ally themselves with the larger clans for their resources. But we, the Hozuki, the Amechi, and the summoning clans all keep our own medics due to the differences in our physiology."

You're not familiar with any of the clans she names, but you note them down in the back of your mind. "Would they be willing to teach me?" you ask. "I... realize that it may be different in Kiri, but I was taught that it's my duty to be able to treat any shinobi who might be under my care."

Kinoka raises her eyebrows, the clan markings going nearly into her hair, but she says, "I can speak for no other clan, but we of the Kaguya are not so foolish as to turn down the opportunity to have another willing to provide treatment to our shinobi. I will speak to my brother, but I think you will be able to return and learn once you have settled into life in the village."

"Thank you," you say. 

"I need no thanks," she says. "Having seen you at work, it is an investment that I think will pay for itself."

"Speaking of medical treatment," Obito says. You flush pink.

"Right," you say. "I did say I'd take care of your bruises after dinner, didn't I? Sorry, Tobi."

"I will take my leave, then," Kinoka says. "Sleep well, the both of you."

"Goodnight," Obito says.

"Goodnight, Kinoka," you say. "Sleep well."

Once she's gone, you help Obito take his shirt off, wincing at the sight of the bruises all over his shoulder and back. They're as dark as the freckled spots on his skin. 

"You should have said something earlier," you admonish him. "This is a lot more than just bruising. I'm surprised you don't have a broken shoulder."

"It dislocated instead," Obito says, apparently unbothered. Apparently he can feel the flat look you give the back of his head, because he immediately protests, "Dislocating my shoulder doesn't even _matter_ anymore! It only hurt because I wasn't expecting it!"

You sigh and silently start funneling your chakra into his shoulder, checking the deeper parts of the muscle to be sure that there's no damage from the dislocation anyway. It seems like it will be fine, though any other medic would probably be alarmed at the way his muscle fibers pull at each other rather than at the ligaments hooking them to the bone.

You resign yourself to the fact that you're going to probably have to find a book on marine anatomy to study. If you can find anything good on octopus specifically, you're going to make Obito read it, too.

"Hey, Rei?"

It takes you just a moment too long to react to the name. Hopefully, anyone who might be listening in will assume it's because you're concentrating on healing. "What is it?"

"Can you tell me what happened with Ao-san?"

It's phrased neutrally enough, but you know what he's talking about, because how could you _not_? "He was impressed by my control," you say, choosing your words carefully. "He's going to make us specialist jounin for a year, as a sort of probationary period, and then he wants me to join the Hunter Division."

Obito draws in a breath, then lets it out slowly. The gill slits on the bottom of his ribs flare open as he exhales, before closing again. "So he didn't say anything about your chakra?"

"He did," you say, "but he said he wouldn't tell anyone else. I think he's planning to blackmail me with it."

Obito nods. "That's... Okay, it's not _great_ , but it's a lot better than I was worried about."

You nod distractedly. You don't risk poking the presence in the back of your mind - it doesn't feel any different from before, and if it wasn't for how alert the Sanbi was while you fought Kinoka, you'd almost think it wasn't paying attention. Maybe it isn't, won't during the mundane parts of your life, because surely a human life would be boring to something that old, right?

"Speaking of things we were worried about," you say quietly, "My houseguest is awake. Apparently he's been watching for a while. I figured it out when I was meditating last night."

Obito stiffens, and you see the semi-reflective white spots bloom over his skin, making him look even paler than usual and completely hiding his bruises. He's gotten better at controlling them the last few months, but they still show his emotions more clearly than his face, to people who know what to look for (which, admittedly, is pretty much only you). The white is alarm.

"Did anything happen?" he asks.

"He was surprised that I was a medic," you say. "I think it might have impressed him a little? Who knows, really. I'm not an expert in this."

Obito nods stiffly, and the white on his skin retreats enough that you can see the colors of the bruises underneath, though it doesn't completely fade, making his body look pale and sickly (especially on his left side, where there's more spotting). "At least we don't have to worry about him waking up and surprising us now," he says. 

"That's the one bright side, yeah," you say. You push more chakra into your fingers, and then run your hands over his shoulders, checking for any more pain and bruises. His skin is too smooth, almost slick compared to what it should feel like, and you've noticed that he's grown in less body hair than most boys his age. That's probably just a thing, now. "Why don't you tell me about your assessment, and then I'll tell you about mine?"

"Okay," he says, leaning back into your hands. 

You finish up your check and let go of him, but just to pull him back so he sits next to you instead of in front of you. Obito obediently scoots back, letting you lean into him while he wraps an arm around you. He took his goggles off for dinner, but in the dim light, you almost can't tell that his eyes are different colors, shapes, look almost like they belong to two different people.

You can't seem to draw your gaze away from his eyes as he talks through locating the antidote, sneaking around the jounin headquarters, feeling the clock ticking down. It isn't until he's describing Kisame's water jutsu pinning him to the wall, rushing through his gills, that you realize something weird is going on.

Obito is a good storyteller. But he's not _that_ good, good enough to make you so sure you can feel the water that you're surprised your skin is dry and that the skin on _your_ sides is whole and human.

"Obito?" you say, holding up a hand to make him pause. 

"What is it?" he says. You feel a nudge of concern.

You close your eyes, and the feeling retreats. "Did you mean to channel chakra to your eye?" you ask after a moment, deep in your chakra senses.

"What?" he asks, clearly alarmed. When you open your eyes again, he has a hand clapped over his Sharingan eye, looking panicked. "I'm not..."

"The new one," you tell him. "I think it has some kind of doujutsu." _Also_ has some kind of doujutsu. Because that's exactly what he needs.

Obito hesitates, and then he says, "Octopus mom communicated with me mentally after I made eye contact with her."

You nod. "It's possible that your eye is doing something similar, then," you say. "Because I was kind of staring into it, and I felt like _I_ was the one underwater."

He nods, taking his hand down from his Sharingan eye, and then his face twists into a smirk. "Sure you weren't drowning in my eyes for some other reason?"

Your jaw falls open a little. It's been such a long time since he tried to flirt with you, and it was always so obviously a crush, never _playful_ like that, that you don't know how to react.

So you shove him in the shoulder. It's surprisingly enough that you actually manage to push him over onto the tatami, which is no minor feat considering how strong he is now.

"Ow, Rei!"

"Not so loud," you say. "We'll wake Kimimaro-kun." You're sure the boy's room is actually soundproofed even if the guest rooms aren't, but it's enough to make Obito look sheepish.

"Okay, okay, sorry," he says. "We can figure out what's up with my eye later. I'll be careful with it until we know how it works, I promise."

"No extended eye contact," you say, and he nods.

"Want me to keep going?" he says. You consider, then shake your head.

"Tomorrow," you say. "Sorry, I want to hear it, but..."

"Today was a lot," Obito says, and that's the clearest summary of it you can imagine, so you nod, and shuffle past him to go back to your room.

"Sleep well," you tell him.

"I'll try," he says. "Goodnight, Rei."


	9. Other Side of the World V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi gets a new mission.
> 
> Meanwhile, Obito puts the effort into figuring out the whole _summoning _part of his weird ass summoning contract.__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretend this isn't late. Oops, my sleep schedule.
> 
> Also because school has been eating my writer juice for a bit, don't be surprised if there's a delay or hiatus following the next two updates. I still love you guys don't worry.

\----> Kakashi

"Head's up," Kushina tells you, two weeks after Minato's inauguration. You're at lunch with her, because it's turned into a habit over the course of the last six months. She's never tried to get you and Mikoto at the same lunch, which you appreciate, even if she gives you a lot of flack for avoiding the Uchiha. "You're wanted at the tower this afternoon. Figured I'd save you from the heart attack of Anbu appearing out of nowhere to summon you."

You nod. Anbu appearing out of nowhere is always a cause for anxiety, even if you're sort of expecting it. You wound up submitting an Anbu application after all, and village policy is to answer all of those in person, even the rejections. It helps to add to the thin veneer of secrecy about who's in Anbu and who isn't.

(It is incredibly thin, sometimes, especially to the people who keep an eye on the jounin gossip circles. You don't, but you're not ignorant enough to ignore that it exists, either.)

You don't ask if that's what it's about, though, because you're not stupid. Instead, you say, "Did Sensei give you any idea what it was about?"

"Said he'd found something for you to do," Kushina says with a shrug. It's not super indicative of anything, and she stuffs an entire sushi roll into her mouth before speaking again. You think she's swallowed maybe half of it. "Hate how many secrets there are with him being Hokage now," is what you manage to parse out of the resulting noise.

It's a carefully chosen phrase, and you nod agreement. As celebratory as things were in the first few days, Minato has looked tired since his inauguration, even more than he was in the months leading up to it. He's running himself ragged to make the transition smooth for the village. But that's not what's always on your mind when it comes to Minato and secrets.

Even if Kushina's stopped talking about them explicitly, you know she knows you haven't stopped thinking about them. You wonder how long it will take before you can stop thinking about them.

Keeping busy helped, the first time. That's why you submitted the Anbu application. Hopefully whatever Minato has lined up for you will do the job.

You head directly to Hokage Tower after lunch, and the Anbu on duty looks you over before waving you in. You nod your thanks before opening the door.

"Kakashi!" Behind the desk, Minato looks the picture of the Hokage hard at work, except for the fact that you can tell from a glance that the scroll he's working on is a series of seals instead of paperwork. Well, you're not going to say anything. It just means that he isn't resting on his laurels because of his position.

It's good to see him. Minato must feel the same, because he immediately stands and makes his way around the side of the desk to see you up close. "I take it Kushina told you to head over, huh?" he asks.

"She might have, or it might have been a fox in disguise," you say ambiguously, and you're rewarded with the expression on his face where he tries to work out if you're joking or not. Flavoring your responses with the kind of nonsense not even Obito could say with a straight face is something you've been trying out on a few people, and it's rewarding to see that your teacher still hasn't figured out how to take it.

"Right," Minato says finally. "Well, before we get into it, this isn't about the thing you're waiting to hear about. We haven't come to a decision on that yet."

You nod, wondering if it's his way of letting you down easy, so that you're prepared for a no later. You're never quite sure, and so you just file the statement away without looking at what's underneath it. It probably means that there's an argument between Minato and the council over it, but who knows who is on which side.

"What is it about, then?" you ask.

Minato smiles, then, all sunshine and cheer. "I have a special mission for you," he says. "It's a request from the council. They'd like you to find the Sannin Tsunade."

Your immediate reaction, a disdainful snort, gets the better of you. "They want me to bring her back? Everyone knows that's not going to happen."

Minato's smile looks a little more dangerous, though you wouldn't know it if not for the fact that he's your sensei, and you've seen him on so many, many battlefields. "All anyone can ask is that you try. That's why I talked them into letting me give this mission to you, as my student."

Underneath the underneath - _I'm sending you, because I know you won't be obnoxious and pushy with her._ It's just for keeping up appearances with the council, and Minato is entrusting this part of it to you.

Politics is just another battlefield, you suppose.

"Also, I thought it would be good for you to get out of the village for a while," Minato says. "See something of the world for purposes other than war."

In other words: Do some spying for me. Look at the state of the world now. You suppose that makes sense - officially, that's what Jiraiya is doing for the village as well. But Jiraiya, for all that he's your sensei's sensei, is a part of the Third's inner circle, along with the council.

Also, he probably does legitimately mean it, that it would be good for you to get out of the village for a while. That's the kind of thing he would think would help, after Rin.

So you nod. "I'll do it. How long is the mission?"

"I cleared you for three months," Minato says, and that's - longer than you expected. Tsunade is notoriously difficult to find, true, but three months seems like a little much. "If you need more time, send a messenger hawk. Though I'm sure Kushina would prefer it if you were back in the village by the time our little one is born, this is a mission that may take some time."

In other words: If you decide to fuck off from the village, the way Tsunade and Jiraiya have, he'll allow it as long as you check in. That...

You want to take the cover off your Sharingan, so that you can remember this. You want to take that time and go and knock down Kiri's walls to see your team. It's no small thing, what your teacher is offering you.

You smile, and say, "I'll be back by then. I promise, Sensei."

Because you can't abandon your comrades still here in the village, the ones you've only just started to make overtures to. You're sure Gai will be equally enthusiastic whether you agree to go with him to a classmate dinner now or in a year, but even so.

(There is a precious thing here that Obito and Rin both wanted to protect, that Minato and Kushina want to protect, that your father wanted to protect even when it turned against him. You don't know yet what it is, but you want to give it the chance to show itself to you.)

"Good," Minato says, and the smile he wears now is the warm, teacher's smile. "Sarutobi-sama has a letter for you to take along, and it was requested that you ask Orochimaru to write one as well." His face actually does go a bit sour and apologetic at that - the remaining Sannin hasn't been seen even for such basics as grocery shopping since the inauguration. You have no doubt that he's bitter about being passed over for Jiraiya's star student, which is probably why Minato himself can't approach him. "Otherwise, you have a week to get things in order before the mission begins. It's not classified."

"Thanks, Sensei," you say.

"Kushina wants you by for dinner the night before you leave," he says, and then he is your sensei again, rather than the Hokage giving you a personal mission with significant political ramifications and the ability to quit the village without becoming a wanted shinobi. "So factor that into your plans."

You smile then, almost a grin underneath your mask. "Understood," you say, with all the solemnity of a formal mission, and bow your way out.

\----

Orochimaru's home - which is better described as a laboratory with an attached apartment, now that you're close enough to see it - is well out of your way, but you have most of the afternoon to kill, so you might as well get this over with. You feel the tingle of wards as you enter the property, but they don't actually block you from approaching the front door, so you keep going.

You knock. There's no way the Sannin doesn't know you're here, but you're polite and knock anyway. When there's no answer, you knock again, wondering if you're going to have to turn this into a routine for every day between now and when you leave for your mission.

After your second round of knocking, you resolve to wait for ten minutes before leaving, with another knock at the five minute mark. It doesn't take that long - a little over two minutes, the door finally opens.

Orochimaru is as unsettling up close as he was at the inauguration ceremony; black and white like an ink drawing, except for serpentine golden eyes that narrow as he looks down at you. The paleness of his skin goes somewhere beyond the norm - usually in people that pale, the blood vessels beneath their skin are visible, at least enough to give it color. Orochimaru's skin is so white that it looks more like it was painted that way, a couple layers subdermal. The kimono he wears in place of more typical shinobi gear is a yellow-green that isn't much darker.

"Minato's brat," he says, looking down at you. You don't react, because you've heard worse, because it wasn't that long ago that people looked at you and saw only your father's disgrace. "And what brings you to my door? I didn't take your sensei for a sore winner."

It doesn't surprise you, given the reputation all three of the Sannin have for being emotionally driven, that Orochimaru would be a sore loser. You bow your head respectfully and don't rise to the bait.

"The council wishes to see Senju Tsunade return to the village," you say carefully. "The Hokage has chosen me for a mission to locate her."

"If you're here to ask if I know where she is, don't bother," Orochimaru says. "Tsunade and I haven't spoken since she left the village."

You shake your head. "The council would like you to write a letter convincing her to return. However, the Hokage is aware that you cannot be forced to do such a thing, and so I was asked to _request_ a message from you before I leave."

The disdainful look in Orochimaru's eyes has become calculating and measuring instead, although there is little change in the rest of his expression.

"...Return tomorrow morning, and I will have a letter for you," he concludes. "I make no promises that it will be to the council's liking, however."

You bow. It seems your efforts to distinguish Minato from the village council did not go unnoticed. "Thank you, Orochimaru-sama," you say formally.

The Sannin offers you no further words, instead closing his door in your face. You'll take it.

\----> Obito

You and Rin get assigned an apartment crammed into the clanless shinobi housing on the outskirts of the shinobi district of the village. It's honestly a fairly shitty apartment, but neither of you objects because it's free as long as you're in service to the village. The bathroom mirror is chipped and one of the cabinets doesn't have a knob. Trying to cook dinner the second night, you discover that one of the burners on the stove doesn't work.

Still, it's home. You spend the first three days cleaning it top to bottom, putting protective seals into the walls that would leave it untouched even if the rest of the building burnt to a husk around it, and you're glad for being crammed in together, instead of separately. The seals are perfect Sharingan copies of the ones Kushina initially laid into your hideout in Gakegakure.

The day after that, Kisame shows you around the village - not the important parts, but the little hole in the wall places, like the apothecary most of the jounin use or the two best sushi places that cater to shinobi. He points them out as "the cheap place" and "the fancy place," and takes you to lunch at the cheap place, which is the equivalent of Konoha's fancy place at half the cost.

(You're careful to not eat too much, not wanting to take advantage of him. Rin explained to you how Kiri-nin view life debts, the first night after you were both worn out from cleaning, and you're determined that you're not going to take advantage of that.)

Your immediate 'welcome to the village' stipend doesn't cover much, and you both need to turn it into new clothes and gear more than you need furniture. The things you do buy are mostly kitchenware so that you can eat things other than instant food and take out. Kinoka brings you a housewarming gift of half a dozen jars of pickles and a small potted plant, some kind of medicinal herb that makes Rin delighted, which goes in the kitchen windowsill and makes the apartment smell fresh and green.

Which leads to the scene that's happening now: You and Rin, both sitting on the floor, passing a jar of pickled peppers back and forth as you fish them out with chopsticks. Bowls emptied of rice sit on the floor between you. You eat the last pepper you think your body can hold, hand the jar back to Rin, and lean back against a cupboard door with a sigh.

It's the first quiet moment you've had in what feels much longer than a week. Thoughts churn through your mind, but what you say is, "Do you think they have any books on octopus at the library?"

"That's what you're thinking about right now?" Rin says. She closes her chopsticks on the last sweet pepper and pulls it out, setting the jar within your reach. You don't try to grab it.

"Well, it's that or think about my eyes," you say. "The new one or the old one, take your pick."

Even though your apartment is as securely warded as you can manage, you still speak in code. Your 'old eye' is Kakashi, and who 'sensei' is is purely contextual between Kushina and Minato. If you need to distinguish, Minato is your 'old sensei' and Kushina is your 'last sensei.'

"Is the old one giving you trouble?" Rin asks, looking concerned.

"Not really," you say. "I just miss it sometimes."

"Me too," she says, staring at the tips of her chopsticks. Since becoming a jinchuuriki, she eats far more than she used to; you always thought that was just a Kushina thing, but now you think it must be a jinchuuriki thing, or at least _partially_ a jinchuuriki thing. "I'm sure it'll be fine, though. What about your new one?"

"I think I should ask my siblings about it," you say. "When I meditate, there's always whispers in the back of my head... I don't want to think about the possibility that it's anything else."

Because that line of thought leads back to caves and Madara and how, sometimes, you just can't handle being underground. It's fine if you're underwater, and you used to sneak off and take naps in the Gakegakure harbor sometimes, but if you're sleeping in air then you get nightmares. And the only way to break through the nightmares is to get a view of the sky.

(Your apartment, as shitty as it is, at least has a window where you can see the sky. You've already had one night where you just sat with your elbows propped on the low windowsill to watch the stars over the village.)

"Still haven't figured out how to summon them?" Rin asks. You shake your head. "Well. Still beats what's in the back of my head, I guess."

"Is it talking to you?" you say, carefully not naming the entity in question.

"Not usually. It did when I was fighting with Kinoka, but that's it." Rin frowns, looking away from you and scooting so she can sit with her back against the other section of the L-shaped counter. "It probably thinks anything else is boring. But I can feel it watching, sometimes."

You shiver. "I'm not going to complain, then. At least the weird octopus family gives me privacy."

Rin shrugs. "I just keep telling myself it's not human. That makes it easier, I think."

You hum agreement. "Maybe we should try a civilian library," you say. "Shinobi libraries only really care about animals if they're summons, right?"

"For the most part," Rin agrees. "A lot of medics start our training on animals, but it's usually at least _vertebrates_ if not mammals."

You laugh. "Well, as far as anyone knows there hasn't been an octopus summoner before, right? So there probably wouldn't be anything."

"Maybe poisons," Rin says. "I think there's a few species with toxins that are worth harvesting."

You twist your tongue, feeling around at the inside of your mouth. "Well, that at least might be able to tell us whether I'm venomous or not."

Rin sighs, closing her eyes. "Your body is so much," she complains mildly. "Forget normal medication identification, I'm going to tattoo a storage seal on you to hold all of my notes."

You try not to laugh, because you might actually _need_ it, but you can't entirely contain your chuckles. Rin rolls her eyes. "I still haven't forgiven you for getting ink all over my feet."

"It's not my fault!" you say. "And I still say we should be using it to dye your hair."

Rin sticks her tongue out at you, so you do the same in return, except you roll a little ink around in your mouth first so that your tongue comes out black. The two of you immediately dissolve into giggles.

"...Have you tried doing the summoning jutsu with ink instead of blood?" Rin asks.

You pause, then shake your head, reaching up to put a finger in your mouth. Rin shoves her foot into your knee.

"In the bathroom!" she says. "You have water summons, don't soak the kitchen!"

"Yes ma'am," you agree, standing up and heading to the apartment's small bathroom. True to the rest of the place, it's cramped and ugly, and like all true cheap apartments, doesn't have a proper bathtub. You stand over the sink instead, Rin cramming herself in at your shoulder to watch.

You work up an appropriate amount of ink in your mouth - it takes a little bit of chakra and clenching a muscle _under_ your tongue - covering the tips of your fingers before going through the seals and slamming your hand into the curved bottom of the sink. You don't put too much chakra into it, entirely mindful of the fact that some of your siblings were _already_ as big as you when they were born.

There's a puff of smoke, and your hand is immediately trapped underneath the wet weight of a bundle of octopus arms. You have the distinct impression that your summon is rolling her eyes at you as she pulls herself up your arm to sit on your shoulder, one arm wrapped lightly around the side of your neck.

("Lightly," for an octopus, is still going to leave you with a line of sucker marks on your skin, but, you'll deal.)

 _About time,_ she says, making eye contact with you for only a moment before you feel her brushing against your mind. _We were beginning to wonder about you, Stands-his-ground._

"Sorry," you say aloud.

 _Too deep in your own head,_ she says. _Too much skull._

"Hey!"

Rin clears her throat. "So, going to introduce me?" she says, the light tone of her voice just a _little_ faked.

"Right, sorry," you say. "This is Rin, or Rei, and she's - "

You don't exactly find the words to describe her, and in some ways it's easier, to just communicate the impressions. Warm hands, fixing hurts. Precision senbon strikes. The Sanbi, and the smell of the ocean, and falling asleep with her at your back.

"My partner around here," you decide on, finally.

Your sister slides around on your shoulder to meet Rin's eye, and you feel when she's not-quite-included in the connection. _Hello, Slides-through-the-gaps-in-shells,_ she greets Rin, with the sensation of sliding into the space between the top and bottom of a turtle shell - to attack, but also to have a place to defend from. It's a fitting image. _I am Shallow-bite-fells-in-a-blink._

The full expansion of the name-concept is something more like the faintest pinch of a bite, too late already by the time it's felt because of the potency of the venom in it. A poison specialist, small and easily beneath notice, but one of the most deadly. As she introduces herself, your sister flashes iridescent patches on her skin, marks of warning in the shape of rings.

Rin smiles and bows politely. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Shallow Bite," she says. You huff slightly that she's better at distilling the name-concept down into something that can be said aloud than you are. "I'd apologize for Obito, but he _did_ try the summoning jutsu several times before we figured out that it needed ink instead of blood."

 _ _ _Different blood,___ your sister says _ _, with an image of red contrasted with blue-green. Huh. _We knew Stands-his-ground would have to find a different way, but he might have **asked** our aid.___

"Sorry," you say again.

"He underthinks things," Rin says sympathetically.

"You could at least say I overlook them," you mutter, turning your face away from her.

 _ _ _She's correct,___ Shallow Bite says. ___Underthink or overthink, never the right amount of think.___

"I already regret letting you two meet," you say. Rin's giggles and the laughter in your mind match far too well.

 _ _ _Do not be so afraid to speak to us,___ Shallow Bite says. There's something almost wistful to her thoughts, as she wraps one tentacle over the back of your neck. _ _ _You are the eldest and the only one who spoke to Mother. We want to know you.___

That... feels strange. You close your eyes, thinking about how opposite that is to the Uchiha, who were a family that felt just as big, but never wanted much to do with you.

"I didn't realize that octopus were so social," you say, making your voice light, turning it into a joke to cover how close to your heart the feelings come.

 _ _ _We should not be,___ Shallow Bite says _ _. _But you left a little bone in all of us, silly-vertebrate-brother.___

And with that, she dismisses herself with a pop of smoke, leaving you with nothing more than a wet shoulder and Rin's raised eyebrows.

"Well," she says. "I think we can probably conclude that the thought sharing is an octopus summon thing, at least. What did she mean, that you left a little bone in them?"

"I'm not sure," you say. "A little bit of... foolishness? Stubbornness? Something that made them a little more human-like."

Rin looks thoughtful. "Do you think you became more octopus-like?" she says. "In mind, not in body."

"I don't know," you say. "I don't feel any different - but it's not like I was a newborn like the others, right? And I had to be enough like them to start with to summon myself there."

"Maybe," Rin says. And before you can say anything more, she continues, "So I'm hiding in a turtle shell now, am I?"

"If you'd asked me, I would have said you are the turtle's shell," you tease. It gets you an eyeroll in return.

"Don't remind me," Rin says. "I haven't figured out what to do about that one, yet."

"You're going to make me talk to my siblings," you say blandly. It's not even a question; your relationship is predictable that way. Rin was also the one who pushed you into making an effort with the few members of your clan who liked you, which is why you were occasionally saddled with babysitting Itachi duty. Mikoto was the only one of your relatives who ever called you something more distinct than the generic 'cousin' used throughout the clan, and you find that you've actually missed her and her tiny, blank-faced shadow of a son. "It's only fair."

"I guess it is," Rin says, "but that doesn't mean I have to like it. How do you even go about talking to something that big?"

"Politely," you say. Rin stares at you for the blunt advice, and you crack a grin. "Hey, it worked out for me!"

"Somehow," Rin says, but she's smiling, too.

"Look at it this way," you say. "And don't get me wrong, I love Kushina, but if you're willing to sit down and talk with the Sanbi, that's more 'treating the massive chakra monster like a person' than she does. And that's probably about normal for how they get treated, at best. Worst case scenario, it doesn't work and you have to be a hardass later."

"I think the worst case scenario is a little worse than that," Rin says. "But I see your point. I'll... give it a shot tomorrow."

"That's the spirit," you say, giving her a thumbs up.

"But only if you try to talk to your siblings at the same time," Rin says, crossing her arms.

"I will, I will," you say. "I promise."


	10. Other Side of the World VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi hangs out with his classmates before a long mission. It isn't as terrible has he thought it was going to be.

\----> Kakashi

You collect Orochimaru's letter in the morning with a refreshing minimum of fuss. He's waiting for your knock, he opens the door and hands you the letter, you bow and leave with the scroll tucked into your vest. Simple, easy, to the point.

Your visit to the Sarutobi residence is significantly less so. Oh, the Third has his letter perfectly in order, it's true, but his wife refuses to let you out of their house without inviting you for lunch, and you have the feeling that it would cause a political pain for you to refuse. Maybe not for _you_ , but for Minato, and you're trying your best to minimize the number of headaches you're causing your former teacher. _Someone_ should, and it's certainly not going to be the council.

So you resign yourself to an awkward lunch surrounded by old people you don't know. The older Sarutobi child is just-married and, thankfully, off with her new husband on honeymoon somewhere in Rice Country. You don't know the details and don't intend to ask.

Your surprising saving grace, however, comes in the form of the younger member of the family - the classmate of your all-too-brief Academy days, Asuma. Sarutobi Asuma hadn't been especially remarkable in most areas of shinobi practice - he was a hand-to-hand fighter with a better than average grasp of elemental chakra and had been promoted to chuunin the same year as Rin. That, and the fact that he's one of the known parties to the gatherings Gai tries to drag as many of your classmates as possible to, is about the extent of your knowledge of him.

You'd planned to start your whole 'get to know your classmates like a normal person' plan with Gai, but you aren't going to argue with opportunity when it sullenly sits down opposite you for a family meal. He doesn't really look at his parents as you eat, which is awkward but at least a different _kind_ of awkward from what you're used to.

Eventually the Third is called away for other business - he's still helping Minato with the transition most afternoons - and Biwako, perhaps wisely, also takes her leave. It's only once his parents are out of the room that Asuma looks up at you and seems to relax.

"Hey, Hatake," he says. "Heard you got saddled with Tsunade hunting."

"You can call me Kakashi," you say, extending an olive branch of casual friendship where none existed before. "And yeah, I did. I leave at the end of the week."

"Good luck," Asuma says. "The last three people Dad sent out didn't even manage to find her. Did Orochimaru actually write a letter?"

You nod, and pat the front of your vest. Asuma raises his eyebrows.

"Maybe you'll get lucky, then," he says. "You're doing better than the other guys and haven't even left the village yet."

"Does the Third send people looking for her often?" you ask.

Asuma nods. "About once a year, from what I remember. Less the last couple years, just because we don't have enough people to send."

You nod solemnly. As much of an asset as a high-level medic is to the village in wartime, there's not enough jounin to spare on wild goose chases, either. And everyone involved knows it's a wild goose chase, if Asuma's account is any indication. You wonder, idly, who the last person to get Tsunade duty was, and if you can ask them about any leads. Jiraiya is supposed to send a report, but who knows if that will contain anything helpful.

You change the subject. "I realize this is short notice," you say, "and normally I would ask Gai, but since I have you here, would it be possible to have a gathering of our class before I go?"

Asuma's eyebrows shoot up to his forehead protector, and he rubs his hand along the teen-boy scruff growing in under his chin. "Seriously? _You_ want to have a class party?"

"Mm, a friend of Sensei's suggested that I get some friends my own age," you say, letting your tone go almost lilting as you talk. "I decided to give it a try."

The look Asuma is giving you now is one of the clearest 'that sounds like bullshit but I can't call you on it' looks you've ever seen in your life. It might also qualify as a 'have you had a mental breakdown recently?' look.

"Right," he says finally, apparently having decided to not question your change of heart in regard to the idea of having relationships with your classmates. After all, the two you bothered to interact with are dead, as far as Konoha is concerned. "Well, I can probably at least get Gai to show up. Can't make promises for anyone else."

"I wouldn't even know who to ask," you say, inclining your head. "Aside from the obvious. Do you all still meet at the Akimichi barbeque place?"

Asuma nods. "Their clan head was Gai's genin teacher," he says. "Apparently that means we're always welcome there. Afternoon or evening better for you?"

"Afternoon," you say. "Kushina wants me to come by for dinner before I leave."

Asuma grins. "Wouldn't want to get on _her_ bad side," he says. "I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you, Sarutobi," you say.

"Asuma," the other teen corrects. "We're classmates, after all."

\----

You have to fend off an overenthusiastic Gai the next day. His exuberance that you've made an attempt to connect with your old classmates puts even his usual volume to shame. There are _tears_ instead of his usual challenge. It's horrible.

Crying on your shoulder as he squeezes the air out of your chest, he whispers that Rin would be happy for you. You don't acknowledge the words out loud, but you think tears leak out of Obito's eye. It's hard to tell, when they're immediately absorbed by the fabric of the forehead protector over it.

Other than that, your week passes without any particular incident. A classmate whose name you don't even remember - you think she's a branch Nara - apologizes for the fact that she won't be able to come to your 'lunch party' because she's leaving for a mission. You assure her it's fine, even while you have dread creeping down your spine, wondering how many people Asuma and Gai _are_ going to get to come.

You run your dogs. You clean up the empty Nohara house, the one Rin only still lived in as a formality. The Hatake properties are too large to do this with personally - the main house is set up to house somewhere around fifteen people, and there are two side houses on the property and plots for two more on the grounds - and too long-neglected to make a dent in in a week. You've only ever used the training grounds in the back of the property.

Maybe when you get back. It's far more house than you'll ever use, and you have no desire to live there, but... If Kushina and Minato-sensei have as many children as they're talking about, they're going to need somewhere bigger than their current house to _put_ them. You can't legally give them the property until you're twenty, just _in case_ you decide to restore your clan, but there's no reason they can't move in before then.

But there's no reason to keep the Nohara house. Rin told you to sell it, after you'd cleaned it of wards and the few family secrets it has. If she hadn't been first-generation shinobi, Rin's mother might have been a medic with fame to rival Tsunade's, but Nohara Kikumi didn't have any clan or famous teacher to throw weight behind her. She'd been hell bent on building one, and that had led directly to her death when Rin was barely toddling.

You consider giving the three scrolls of medical jutsu she developed to the one remaining member of their family, but from what you've heard, Kikumi was so estranged from her cousin that Rin never even met him as a member of her _family_. So instead you roll them up with the letters to give to Tsunade, if you manage to find the woman. She'd be able to make the best use of them.

When you get back, you'll find someone to give the house to, some nice married couple looking for a fresh start. It's not like you need the money you'd get from selling it. Perhaps you can ingratiate yourself further with the Sarutobis by giving it to their newlyweds. Hell, you'll give it to Asuma if he wants it.

That's a worry for when you get home. You clean, you run your dogs, and you pack and repack your sealing scrolls until you're satisfied for the third time, and on the morning of the party, you go to the memorial stone.

You're not prepared to have company, though it's not that surprising. What _is_ surprising is who the company is - Uchiha Mikoto, carrying a blooming magnolia branch. You acknowledge her with a nod, and step quietly to the side, so that she can put her flowers at the base of the memorial.

Mikoto gives you a small smile, and sets the branch down gently. You wonder where she got it; as far as you know, there aren't any magnolias on the Uchiha grounds. The Yamanakas, perhaps?

You don't say anything, but you find it too awkward to leave, as Mikoto clasps her hands in prayer briefly, kneeling in front of the memorial stone, before she stands. The two of you stay there in silence, standing side by side with loss.

Finally, with a wistful smile, Mikoto says, "You're still avoiding me, Kakashi-kun."

"...Hn," you hum, not committing to an answer. Mikoto chuckles in response.

"I was glad to see you using your Sharingan after the inauguration," she says. "I don't know if it will be the same for you, since it was a transplant, but it's important to balance out the bad memories with good ones."

"...I wanted him to see it," you say. It's not a lie, but Kojiro has unknowingly provided you with a good excuse, if you ever get caught referring to Obito like he's still there.

Mikoto closes her eyes. "I understand." She looks back at the memorial stone, and you notice the flash of red as she does so. "Has Kushina ever told you about Shiki?"

"I've heard the name," you admit. "Your third teammate, right?

Mikoto nods. "Aburame Shiki - the younger sister of the current clan heir. Shibi lost both of his siblings to the war." You nod acknowledgement, even though she's looking away from you. You remember the news, a year before Obito, of the eldest child of the Aburame head being killed in action. You don't remember hearing about Shiki, though, so it must have been before you started paying attention to the war in earnest.

"She was my best friend in the Academy," Mikoto continues. "Kushina didn't really get along with us until we were put on a team together - she and I always used to butt heads as kids. But Shiki..." A sad little chuckle. "I loved her, you know? She kept me grounded. Rin and Obito reminded me a lot of us at that age, but it was more than that. When we were sixteen, when my engagement to Fugaku was announced, I tried to talk her into running away with me. When she said no, I assumed it was because she didn't feel the same."

And Mikoto turns back to you, now, and opens her eyes wide. The traditional marks of her Sharingan spin until they blur, until a pinwheel pattern takes their place. Mikoto's Mangekyou, you think, looks like flower petals, compared to the arcs of black you saw in Obito's.

"She died taking a blow that was meant for me," Mikoto says. "...After her death, Shibi gave me her journal. The Aburame always play their emotions close to their chests... Shiki was no different, and I was too foolish to see it until it was too late."

"...I'm sorry," you manage, because what else can you say? You don't think you loved Rin or Obito like that, not like _let's run away from the village_ , except you were ready to, weren't you? You would have, in a heartbeat; Kushina had to _stop_ you.

"You're not the only one in this village who has watched their world fall apart with these eyes." Mikoto's eyes spin back out into the regular Sharingan, and then back to black. "That's all I wanted to tell you."

She's turning to go. You don't know how you're supposed to react. An unpleasant feeling fills your gut, and on impulse, you call to her back, "Mikoto-san?"

She stops, and turns back to you. You shove your forehead protector up off your face, and feed chakra into the always-active eye until your spatial awareness gains the same hypersensitive quality as your vision.

"...He would have wanted you to see it," you say.

Mikoto stares into your eye, the red of the Sharingan coming back to hers as she memorizes the pattern of the swirl. It's only a moment, but you don't deactivate the Mangekyou until she closes her eyes and nods.

"And I would have told him how proud I am," she says.

"Nothing would have made him happier than to hear that," you say. and pull the cover back down over the eye. Even that short exchange drained a significant portion of your chakra; just _activating_ the Mangekyou takes as much out of you as an hour's run across water, even if you don't do anything with it. It's not enough to completely exhaust you, but you hope that Gai doesn't plan to challenge you to any stupid stunts at the party.

Mikoto smiles, and says, "Good luck on your mission, Kakashi," before turning and walking away.

\----

You're late to the party. You blame the fact that showing Mikoto your Mangekyou took more out of you than you thought, in your head. Out loud, you say, "Sorry, everyone, a girl in love needed help with her flower arranging."

The fact that it's a greatly distorted version of the truth just makes the way everyone except Gai gives you the 'are you having a mental breakdown' look all the sweeter. 

(Gai, for his part, shouts, "I'M GLAD TO HEAR YOU'VE CHOSEN TO ENCOURAGE THE BLOOM OF TRUE LOVE, KAKASHI!")

Asuma sighs and shakes his head, gesturing for you to take the seat next to him. You do, leaving space for Gai on your other side when he settles down from his current bout of acrobatics. You've learned, and you assume that everyone else at the table knows, to always give him the aisle seat, because otherwise the person between Gai and a way to burn off that relentless energy might get mildly trampled in the process.

"Can't believe you actually came, even if you _are_ late." Shiranui Genma, a chuunin you've seen around the Hokage Tower a few times in the last few weeks, guarding Minato's office. Runner for the Hokage isn't a bad way to climb the ranks and find something to do with yourself, you suppose. "Guess I owe Saki a hundred ryo."

_Saki_ , right, that's the name of the Nara you ran into earlier this week. You note it down to remember for next time, because if no one knows that you _didn't_ learn it in the academy, it doesn't make a difference.

"Maa, you should have known better than to bet against me, Shiranui," you say, drawing your words out lazily. 

"It was a bet on whether you or Ebisu would show up to one of these first," Genma says. "Gotta show support for our teammates, right?"

His eyes and the point of his senbon both flick over to Gai, who is doing a couple of handstand pushups in the aisle between tables. You can only imagine the kinds of pep talks about team loyalty Genma must have gotten in his genin years.

"Well, then I'll have to thank Saki-chan for her support the next time I see her," you say cheerfully.

"It's really Rin I owe the money to, anyway," Genma says. "Saki just stepped up to inherit the bet."

You go quiet, as does the rest of the table. It hurts more than you expected it to, knowing that Rin had so much confidence that you would come around to the rest of your class eventually.

A solid third of your classmates who actually graduated the academy have died. Most of them, it was either only one team member or all three. Genma and Gai are oddities, for having all three members of their team surviving, and so are you, for being the last man standing. And according to what you've heard, they only survived the Kiri front because of Gai's father sacrificing himself for them.

There's no one around this table who hasn't lost someone. It makes them feel like true comrades, for the first time, instead of just shinobi you shared a village with.

Your brooding is interrupted by Gai, who backflips out of his handstand and practically slams himself into the seat next to you. You get squashed in against Asuma by his boundless energy, and yet you can only bring yourself to sigh heavily.

(Rin and Gai were the ones who originally organized these meetings, after the first casualties of your class. Obito, ever happy to be Rin's shadow, went to every one.)

"Rin would not want us to dwell on the past!" Gai proclaims. "She would want us to look forward to the future and spend our youth well in the coming era of peace!"

There are nods from the other side of the table - Yuhi Kurenai, opposite Asuma, Genma, and a kunoichi named Chiko from a civilian family. In a dragged-over chair next to Chiko is Hyuuga Arato, with scars on his face from where an Iwa-nin tried to carve out his Byakugan and an eyepatch over the one that had been too damaged to use as a result. He only had vision at all because Rin had started studying doujutsu eyes after your transplant, and the two of you were able to make it there in time.

"To Rin," he says simply, and even if you don't have alcohol, you would never hesitate in lifting your glass of water in a toast.

You're extremely aware of their eyes on you as you drink through your mask. It's the reason you only ever _get_ water to drink at places like this. Kurenai raises her eyebrows at you. "Really, Kakashi?"

"What is it?" you ask innocently.

Arato snorts, breaking the image of a dignified Hyuuga clan member to pieces. (Then again, the near-loss of his eyes made him a disgrace to the clan. As far as you know, he's about as close to getting disowned as a Hyuuga can _get_.) "I don't know why everyone's so obsessed with seeing under his mask," he says. "It's not anything special."

"If Kakashi wishes to keep his face hidden from the world, then it is most unyouthful to violate his privacy, Arato!" Gai says. "Even if it is possible for your eyes to see, that does not mean they should!"

"Maybe we should have expected a Kakashi who likes screwing with us," Chiko says. "It was always there, hiding in plain sight."

...Huh, you'd never thought of it that way. Might as well lean into it.

The banter is interrupted by someone arriving to take your orders, and you order only a small appetizer. The good thing about Akimichi restaurants is that the portions are always massive. As it is, Genma, Chiko, and Kurenai pool in together for two dishes to split between them.

Gai orders three. You plan to steal from his food, if you're still hungry after yours.

"You're leaving the village on a long mission, right?" Kurenai asks. "You'd better not flake on us after you get back, Kakashi."

"I wouldn't dream of it," you say. "I couldn't possibly disappoint my cute little classmates like that."

There's a pause while the group - all of them at least two years your senior, Chiko three - process the statement.

"I changed my mind," Chiko says. "Bring back the Kakashi who practically made out with the shinobi handbook, I want an exchange."

"Isn't it good that he's finally learned to express the youthful personality he's kept buried all these years?" Guy says brightly. He passes the first plate of barbeque in front of you towards Asuma. 

"That's definitely one way of looking at it," Genma says. He uses his trademark senbon to pluck a piece of meat from the plate as it goes past.

From there, it quickly becomes clear that class dinners are actually something of a free-for-all, everyone snatching bits to sample off other people's plates. Two of Gai's are the weekly special, and he's quite happy to lift one of them towards Kurenai and Asuma for them to taste. Apparently the Akimichi are always experimenting with new spice and sauce combinations.

The only person whose plate doesn't get stolen from is Arato, whose meal is so spicy that it makes your eye water even from a seat down. You wonder if that's a defense mechanism against the others.

The wild grappling for choice bits at least gives you plenty of opportunities to slip food into your mouth without the others seeing under your mask. You wind up getting to eat far more than you expected, clearing your plate and a good portion of the weekly special Gai leaves sitting by your elbow. You wonder how you're going to have room for dinner with Kushina and Minato in a couple hours.

As you eat, the conversation wanders. Arato gives you some tips on doujutsu eye care - "Though it might be different for the Sharingan, I don't know, ask an Uchiha if you get the chance." - and Kurenai offers to help you train in disrupting genjutsu with it when you get back. Apparently she specialized in them at some point down the line, and is good enough that she's already been made specialist jounin for it. You offer in return to help her expand her general jutsu so that she can get everything else up to jounin standard. 

It's... good. You actually mean it, when you promise to meet up with them again when you come back to the village. No one brings up Rin or Obito again, or anyone else's dead teammates for that matter. For a little while, the hurt goes away.

It comes back, once everyone is gone except for you and Gai, who is carefully and neatly stacking dishes and skewers for the waitstaff. Just for a moment, when he looks up at you and says, "They'd be happy for you, Kakashi," in that quiet way he has when all the enthusiastic raving has drained away.

It hurts. But it hurts differently, somehow, more like the ache of a healing sprain than some sharp jostle of a broken bone. More like the way your eye feels when you use it now, with faintly painful tingling, than it did when you used it for the first time, on that day.

"They would be, wouldn't they?" you say, and before giving Gai a chance to answer, you put your plate on top of the pile and flashstep away.

\----

You get to Kushina and Minato's house early in the afternoon, proceeding there almost immediately from lunch. There's an Anbu hanging out on the fenceline that you don't actively acknowledge, but you feel the faint wash of chakra as you go inside, checking that you are who you say you are.

The pregnancy hasn't been publicly announced yet. They're putting that off for as long as possible, while also keeping Kushina's guard detail unchanged. She might be a capable shinobi in her own right, but being the wife of the new Hokage makes her a target even without the added complications of the Kyuubi.

Once inside, you settle in to help her prep for dinner, chopping vegetables with the reflexes of someone who was expected to specialize in swordsmanship when you first came out of the academy. You haven't picked up a blade since the bridge mission.

Kiri prides itself on bladework. You wonder if Rin or Obito is going to learn. Obito might not be an Uchiha anymore, but they've always been pretty talented with weapons. You wonder if Rin has made use of the senbon jutsu the two of you worked together on.

"Thinking about old friends again?" Kushina asks, causing you to realize that you've gone still, all the vegetables cut on autopilot and the knife still in your hand. You pointedly set it down on the cutting board.

"A little," you say. "I keep finding myself wondering about how strong they'll be when I see them next."

(Because there's no doubt in your heart that you'll see them again. It might be years, almost certainly will be, but you don't have a single doubt. Rin and Obito will survive Kiri and come back stronger than ever, someday.)

"Hmm..." Kushina hums thoughtfully, tilting her head. "You want to know what I think?"

"You're going to tell me either way," you point out dryly. She grins at you.

"Damn right I am," she says. "But I thought I'd ask anyway. You're scared of being left behind. Which, I get it, stunning genius of your generation, whole new thing for you."

"You think that's it?" you ask.

Kushina nods. "Those two grew a lot stronger really suddenly, and you've never had to struggle to keep up with anyone before." You nod. Gai can beat you in pure taijutsu, but that's the result of him coming from a family of specialists; you beat him in every other area. "Plus, they're under a lot of pressure to get better, and you aren't. That's why you wanted to join Anbu, right?"

"I guess," you say. It's not quite your conscious reasoning, but now that it's been pointed out to you, you can't exactly say that it's wrong.

Kushina nods confidently, like you've given her a far more certain kind of confirmation. "You'll get stronger in Anbu, I'm sure, but I don't think it's really the kind of strength you're looking for," she says. "Anbu's like the medical corps or T&I. It teaches you how to do a couple of things really well, but it leaves you pretty lopsided for other stuff."

"The skills I'd develop in Anbu would play to my strengths," you say. It sounds like something old Kakashi, before-Rin-and-Obito Kakashi, would say, and you're frowning at yourself under your mask before Kushina even opens her mouth again.

"And you'd get even worse at your weaknesses," she says. "And yeah, Anbu's great for infiltration, assassination, and tracking, and those _are_ all things you're good at. But it has a..." She hums, waving a finger in the air while she tries to think of the words she wants. "A genericizing factor? You can't use bloodlines, summons, or personal techniques in Anbu unless the mission is in dire straits or you have prior approval, and you have all _three_ of those things now."

"So you're against it," you say.

"For right now, yeah," Kushina says. "You're only just starting to learn to interact with other people normally - don't think I didn't hear about your party earlier, Asuma-kun came to ask Minato if _you were okay_ after you reached out to him - and you're at the age where people really discover their personal styles, not just as shinobi, but as people. Anbu would drive you right back into your shell."

It's a better thought-out objection than you were prepared for, though you should have expected no less from Kushina. You've already seen many times how clever she can be; give an Uzumaki an inch and they'll take a mile, Minato-sensei told you once.

"I'll think about it," you say. "How do you start developing your own style?"

"Well, I started with clan background and a fox to fall back on," Kushina says, "but a lot of it comes down to experimenting. Which, hey, you've got three months to do that on the road. Knock yourself out. Maybe pick something up in your travels."

"I don't really know how to experiment," you say. "What should I look for?"

Kushina sighs. "I swear, you geniuses..." she mutters. There's silence for a moment while she washes her hands and takes out a pan. You trail after her to the sink and start to scrub your own fingers. 

"Okay," she says, brushing a bit of stray hair out of her face. "Let's start with this: When you're in a fight, what makes you feel powerful?"

"Speed," you say immediately, and then after a little more thought, "Taking the enemy down in one hit."

"As I should've expected from the kid whose only personal jutsu is Chidori..." Kushina mutters. "Okay, that's a starting place for a style. That's like deciding if you want a meat dish or a noodle dish for dinner, but there's more to consider than that. You have to figure out what kind of meat, what kind of veggies you're going to put with it, what kind of spices? Do you land the hit before your opponent has the chance to see you coming, or do you wait for an opportunity? What do you have in your back pocket for when you miss?"

"So it's strategy," you say.

"Like, the most generic form of your strategy," Kushina agrees. "But it's also in how you think about it. Some people try to have contingencies planned for everything. Some people exclusively go with their gut. That's a style thing, too."

You nod. It's a lot to consider and think about. You know Kushina tends towards improvisation, the few times you've seen her fight. She has a handful of tools - her sealing chains, her other sealing abilities, and the Kyuubi in a worst case scenario - and she's figured out every possible use of those things.

Obito's Sharingan hums in your head. Everyone keeps telling you to train it with the Uchiha, but it occurs to you that the Uchiha might not be getting as much mileage out of the Sharingan as they could. Most of them rely on it for its predictive abilities or genjutsu, sometimes to analyze their opponents (but that's more in line with the Hyuuga style).

If the Sharingan is a tool, then what are _all_ of its uses?

"Don't you have some clan jutsu, too?" Kushina asks.

"Probably," you say. "I haven't looked at them. I don't go back to that house often."

Kushina hums, and doesn't say anything more for a while. You're perfectly content in the relative silence, as her tuneless humming turns into singing under her breath. You make rice as Kushina fries pork cutlets over the stove.

"...Sometimes I think I can still feel him, through this eye," you say at length. "If it were possible to reach him through that connection..."

Kushina taps her tongs on the side of the oil pot. "I've never heard of anything like that," she says. "But if anyone could pull it off, it would be you. Keep me updated."

You nod. "Any chance the Uchiha might know something?"

"I think they have a jutsu that lets them transfer memories between eyes," Kushina says. "But, y'know, clan secret stuff. Only reason I know about Mikoto's Mangekyou is because I was there."

"I ran into her earlier today," you say. "She told me the story. Some of it."

Kushina sighs. "I'm not surprised," she says. "She told me once that the Mangekyou is the one ghost no Uchiha can escape once they've seen it."

You hear the door click open at the other end of the house. You're almost glad for the excuse to drop the conversation.

"I'm home!" Minato calls from the entranceway.

"Welcome back!" Kushina calls in return, all the melancholy of the last few moments dissipating. "We're in the kitchen!"

You shouldn't be surprised that Minato jumps to the kitchen with hiraishin in order to sweep Kushina into his arms, but you roll your eyes anyway. Your teachers are gross and in love.

"If you two are going to be like that all night, I'm going to go look for Tsunade now."

"Wait, Kakashi, don't - "

(Eventually, Minato will probably learn to stop taking you seriously, but you kind of hope he doesn't.)


	11. Other Side of the World VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rin receives a guest.
> 
> Meanwhile, Minato tries to be a good sensei.

\----> Rin

You're not trusted with out-of-village missions yet and probably won't be for a while, but there's still plenty to do. Kiri didn't suffer much direct damage in the war - the ocean surrounding Water Country provides a good defense against landbound shinobi - but there's always _something_ for a skilled medic to do. Actual missions are C and D ranks, but Obito's almost as charming to the Kiri civilians as he was to little old ladies in Konoha, so he tends to roll in tips. It'll be enough to make ends meet for a while even if you're doing small missions or taking shifts at the hospital almost without break.

But when you get enough of a break that you think you'll have more than an hour to spare for yourself, you meditate. You work to conquer your fear of what lies in that lagoon.

It is, you must admit to yourself, a work in progress.

You take a deep breath, and mentally you plunge down, through the water in your thoughts until you surface just inside the lagoon. As usual, the Sanbi is either asleep or pretending to be asleep, not acknowledging your presence. 

You sigh silently and haul yourself up to the sandbar you usually sit on. The Sanbi is so different from what you'd been led to expect that you're stumped as to what to do. It's impossible to get a read on. You'd almost prefer what Kushina told you about the Kyuubi's raging, because at least that would be predictable, rather than this silence.

But the waves are still calming, and if you close your eyes, you can forget about the giant monster turtle in the room. If the Sanbi wants to talk, it will.

It's been perhaps twenty minutes when, to your shock, it _does_.

" **It seems we have a visitor.** "

Your skin prickles with goosebumps, and you jerk all the way out of the lagoon as your concentration slips. Your apartment is exactly as you left it - absent Obito, who must still be out doing some kind of mission - but you can feel a growing tickle against your chakra senses.

They haven't arrived yet, this other shinobi, but you couldn't imagine _missing_ them. Not with chakra like that.

The Rokubi jinchuuriki.

You're on your feet instantly, in front of the door before the shinobi on the other side can even knock. You swing open the door to see him with his hand raised to do so, the both of you blinking at each other in shock.

He's younger than you. That's the first thing that processes in your mind - you remembered Ao mentioning that the Rokubi had been sealed in its current jinchuuriki for four years, but in your mind that meant that he had to be at least your age, if not older. Kushina told you that you were _old_ for a jinchuuriki, one of the oldest since Mito herself, but you hadn't really put that together with what it meant.

You hadn't realized that that meant most other jinchuuriki were _children_ when the Tailed Beasts were sealed inside them. But the boy in front of you, with long brown hair sweeping over a Kiri band, is somewhere around three years younger than you, which means he would have been eight or nine when the sealing was done.

"...Hi," you say awkwardly.

"Hello," he says, with the kind of indicative-of-nothing tone that would have fit right in with one of Konoha's noble clans. "May I come in?"

"I think that would be best," you say, stepping aside to let him enter. When you close the door behind him, you touch a finger to the wards and send a pulse of chakra through them. It should be enough to keep any listening ears out, and to warn Obito not to come crashing in the way he usually does.

"...Can I offer you some tea?" you say, when you see how he's looking around. There's still not much furniture, but you can do that much. 

(This is the first time either of you has had a guest, anyway, other than the ten minutes Kinoka came by to give you your housewarming gifts. Both you and Obito have already formed the habit of socializing elsewhere.)

"That would be... appreciated," the boy says. At least he seems to feel as awkward as you do, if the way his eyes keep darting around is any indication. "My name is Utakata."

"Reiko," you say. "Call me Rei. It's nice to meet you." You set the kettle on the stove to heat and start digging out teacups. "What brings you here?"

Play plausible deniability as long as you can, that's the name of the game here.

Utakata glances around and says, "Saiken said that one of his siblings was here."

"Saiken... The Rokubi?" you say. You can see how the bijuu might consider each other siblings, if you squint, and that's the only thing you can imagine applies.

Utakata nods. "He told me to come here... It is you, isn't it? I can't sense anything..."

You grimace. "...It's me," you admit. "But it's hidden under a second layer of seals."

And you shove your sleeve back up your arm and touch your chakra to the Sanbi's just enough that the lines of the disguise seals snaking down your arm manifest. Utakata seems to look closely at your arm, inclining his head so that his bangs fall away from his face, before nodding.

"Can I ask why?"

You hesitate. It's difficult enough, handling this part of your cover being broken, but... "I'm not from Kiri," you say. "We weren't sure what would happen when we came here, so... a secret weapon seemed like a good idea."

"I see." Utakata might be younger than you, but he gives off the impression of being older, with how refined he is. "Then, would you like to train together sometime?" You hesitate in responding, and he continues, "My master has warded a training ground so that it cannot be sensed from the outside. It should be safe."

"That... Would be nice," you admit. You're wary of trusting him outright, but it doesn't seem like Utakata means you any harm. Kushina impressed on you how lonely the road of jinchuuriki is. If you give him the benefit of the doubt, looking through the lens...

Ao mentioned that he's already been a jinchuuriki for four years. That means he was _eight_. Not even old enough to be a proper shinobi.

You feel a shift against the back of your mind. Of course the Sanbi would be watching now.

"May I ask a question?" you say. "How did you know that I was here?"

"Saiken told me," Utakata says simply. "It seems the bijuu can sense their siblings, and even communicate with each other to some extent. This is the first time I've met another jinchuuriki, though."

You relax your shoulders, just slightly. "Thanks," you say. "I was worried that the seals were messed up somehow... But if it's some way they have of sensing each other, then it doesn't have anything to do with chakra leaking out."

Utakata nods. "Can I ask who made those seals?"

"My sensei," you say, and then add after a bit of hesitation, "She was an Uzumaki survivor."

You figure they probably know what that means, here in Kiri. Utakata nods thoughtfully, though you can see that he's not happy about it. The kettle whistles, and you let him sit in the silence as you take it off the stove to pour tea. "You look disappointed," you observe aloud as you sit back down.

"If it's Uzumaki work, even my master probably won't be able to imitate it," Utakata says. "When you said it was a seal, I had hoped..." He stops, shaking his head. "Even under a henge, any sensor can identify me easily. There's no way to escape the treatment of a jinchuuriki."

"So you were hoping you'd be able to hide it, too," you say. You can't blame him for that. "Well, I can't make any promises, but my partner and I learned a few things about sealing from her. We can at least give it a try?"

"Really?" The eye visible under Utakata's bangs is wide and excited.

"Consider it payback for the use of the training ground," you say. And then, because you haven't yet gotten a smile out of him, you add, "Besides, I'll be counting on you as my senpai, right?"

That gets you a small smile, finally, which Utakata attempts to hide behind his tea. His attempt has nothing on Kakashi, but you'll give him credit for trying. "I'll do my best," he says quietly.

"How is your relationship with Saiken?" you ask. "The Sanbi doesn't really talk to me at all... I don't even know its name." Admittedly, you hadn't thought to ask, and that burns with shame, but you can only apologize for that later.

"It's better than I thought it would be," Utakata says. "Saiken says that he's the most outgoing one, which is probably why. I think only having one person he can talk to is one of the worst parts of being sealed for him; he told me that his old jinchuuriki didn't talk to him at all unless she had to."

That sounds more like Kushina's relationship with the Kyuubi, so you nod. "The Sanbi doesn't speak much at all," you say. "It just watches me. I didn't even realize it was awake for a while."

Utakata nods, and then something strange happens. For just a moment, his attention seems to drift, as though he's listening to something only he can hear. "...Saiken says he's always been reticent," he says at length. "And exactly as patient as you would expect from an immortal turtle."

You can't help but giggle a little at that. "That matches the impression I've gotten," you say. "Thank you, Saiken-san."

Utakata hums, tipping his head briefly towards you, and then takes another sip of his tea. "He also says that it's up to the Sanbi if he tells you his name or not. He doesn't mind anyone using his name, though."

"I'll keep that in mind," you say. "Is there anything else you think I should know?"

Utakata pauses to think, and taps a finger against his teacup as he sets it down. "One thing. The intended Sanbi jinchuuriki is a boy around my age named Karatachi Yagura. He's... not so bad, most of the time, but he's ambitious and intends to use the power of being a jinchuuriki to secure himself a higher position in the village. I'm not sure how he'd react to finding out that it's been sealed in someone else."

You nod. "I'll avoid him as much as I can."

"You'll most likely meet him if you come to the training ground," Utakata says. "He likes to ask questions about jinchuuriki and seals from my master."

So, maybe not entirely able to avoid him, but at least you're forewarned. And hopefully your seals will protect you enough; as unlikely as it was that Ao had a Byakugan, it seems even more unlikely that someone Utakata's age would have one. "What does he look like?" you ask.

"Blond hair that's a little bit green, and purple eyes," Utakata says. "He's very small, and usually carries a large weapon."

Considering that twelve-year-old boys aren't generally very tall, that makes you wonder how remarkably small this Yagura must be. Still, you commit the information to your memory.

"Thanks," you say. "I'll keep my eyes open." You finally take the chance to drink some of your tea, and silence settles over the two of you. Utakata's eyes move like he's still talking to someone, though, and you just take the opportunity to study him talking to his bijuu.

You think you'd far rather have a relationship like that with the Sanbi than the one Kushina has with the Kyuubi, if you can get it. Maybe the way they do things in Kiri isn't _all_ backwards, even if you still object to how their hospital is run.

The quiet doesn't last more than ten minutes or so before there's a knock at the door. "Rei?" Obito calls from the other side. "Can I come in, or are you busy?"

You stand up and open the door to let him in, since he wouldn't be able to hear your reply through the wards. "Sorry," you say. 

"Oh, you have a guest," Obito says, looking over Utakata, who blinks under his bangs. "I didn't mean to interrupt."

"You weren't interrupting anything," Utakata says, bowing his head slightly. "It's your home as well, isn't it?" He looks to you for clarification, and you nod, pushing the door closed and checking that the wards are still in place.

"This is Tobi," you say, tugging Obito by the arm to sit down at the section of floor that's serving as a table. "He was my genin teammate, and he knows all my secrets. Tobi, this is Utakata-kun, the Rokubi jinchuuriki, and Saiken-san."

Neither boy seems quite sure how to react to your blunt introduction, but Obito is the first to recover with an, "Oh, hello! It's nice to meet you."

"It's nice to meet you," Utakata parrots back in a slight monotone. He adds after a pause, "Saiken is also pleased to meet you."

"Ah, well..." Obito mumbles slightly, and you see a good portion of his face turn purple. "I can't say I expected to ever be greeted politely by one of the Tailed Beasts," he finally says. "It's nice to meet you too, Saiken."

This seems to make Utakata pleased, at least. You say, "I offered to try to come up with a version of my disguise seal for Utakata so that he can go places without everyone knowing who he is. Want to help?"

"Sure!" Obito says cheerfully. "But, maybe later? I finally got my official assignment, I'm supposed to report to Infiltration and Communications in the morning."

Utakata tilts his head. "You don't _look_ like a spy," he says.

Obito waves his hand dismissively. "I'm good at getting in and out of places I shouldn't be," he says. "I'm more useful as a specialist than as someone on the front lines, especially now that the war's over. Rei too; she's the best medic around."

"Even with...?" Although he doesn't finish the question, Utakata's eyes land knowingly on your stomach.

You laugh awkwardly. "I had to practice really hard," you say. "And I'm still nervous about treating organ damage."

"So modest," Obito teases, nudging you in the side with one elbow.

Utakata looks thoughtful. He pushes his empty tea cup over to the kettle. "I should be going," he says. "My master will be worried if I'm out too late. Thank you for the tea."

"Thank you for the visit," you say. "And the information. I'll see you again soon."

Utakta bows, and you and Obito bow back before you show him to the door. You leave the wards up after you close it, and sigh heavily as you lock it up for the night.

"Apparently the bijuu can sense each other," you say to Obito. "Sensei didn't account for that in her seal. I guess it's because she and the old fox have such a bad relationship."

Obito nods. "And Utakata and... Saiken, have a good one?"

You nod. "He said that Saiken's very social. I find it hard to imagine, but I've already seen that the Sanbi isn't just a rampaging monster, either. I guess they all have different personalities."

Obito snorts. "And the Kyuubi's just an asshole?"

You shrug. "Maybe. Or maybe he's just holding a grudge about being sealed. Uzumaki Mito was the first person to do it, after all."

Obito doesn't say anything for a minute, but his face turns black and broody. You hope he'll be able to better control the way his skin matches his emotions soon, even if you'll miss the way it makes him open and easy to read. "...Yeah, can't really blame someone for being pissed off about that," he says. 

You're sure he's thinking about the cave again. You sit next to him and wrap an arm around his shoulders. "It gave me a lot to think about," you say. "But Utakata's master has a training ground that's warded so that people outside it can't feel when a bijuu is let loose, and I'm invited to use it, now."

"That's good," Obito says. "And you have a senpai, so you'll be able to get tips."

You nod, frowning. "He's already been a jinchuuriki for four years. That's so _young_."

"Welcome to Kiri," Obito says. He slips his arm around your waist in turn, and the two of you drift off into silence. "...Does the Sanbi have a name?"

"He does," you say. "But Saiken pretty much said that I'd have to ask for it myself."

Obito nods. "Well, let me know if he tells you," he says.

"Yeah," you agree. You lean into his side for another minute, closing your eyes, before withdrawing your arm from around him and nudging him in the side, careful to be above the gill slits under his jacket. "Your turn to make dinner."

"Fine, fine. Chicken good?"

"Works for me."

\----> Minato

Your wife and student are conspiring against you. That's the only explanation.

Kakashi is _early_. That's something almost unheard of in the last few months. He hasn't reached Obito's levels of chronic lateness, but the days when he was religiously, perfectly five minutes early for everything are long gone. The precision faded with Obito, but Rin seems to have taken the last shreds of Kakashi's timeliness with her. Unless there's someone with him to walk him from place to place, Kakashi is never early anymore, and only rarely on time, though he doesn't make you wait when it comes to official business, at least.

Still, you can't shake the feeling that he arrived early for something a little more sinister than chopping vegetables with Kushina. You're glad they're getting along - you know you haven't had as much time for Kakashi as you'd like, as he really _needs_ , since it became clear that you were going to sit under the hat. Kakashi needed someone and Kushina stepped up where you weren't able to, and if you hadn't already married her you would have proposed to her for that alone. You planned for that, of course, but that plan was intended for you _dying_ , not you getting so buried in paperwork that you only rarely see the sun anymore.

You trust them. They're more than comrades, they're your family, your wife and awkward little brother of a student, and you know they wouldn't do anything to hurt you. 

That doesn't change that Kushina has a taste for pranks, and if she's dragged Kakashi into it, you definitely need to be on your guard. She's been teaching him sealing, and you don't think for a moment that that doesn't include the kinds of seal-based traps she was both famous for and regularly reprimanded for in the academy.

The incredibly sweet way Kushina kisses you, to Kakashi's apparent disgust, doesn't reassure you at all. She's always sweetest when she's plotting.

"Okay, okay," you say. "Let's have some regard for poor Kakashi, yeah? It is _his_ going away dinner."

"Hm," Kushina says. "I suppose we can do that, since we'll have three months without having to worry about him. Kakashi, don't you dare come home early."

"Of course not, Kushina-san," Kakashi says, with the kind of childlike sincerity that every academy teacher ever born knows is complete bullshit. You mentally tack another week on to when he's expected back.

(Your current operating schedule is five months, even though he was only cleared for three.)

(Five months, you hope, will give you enough time to figure out what Danzo wants with him, that he would push so hard for Kakashi to be accepted into Anbu.)

"How did things go with your classmates?" you ask Kakashi, as you start to set out the dishes for dinner.

"It went okay," he says. Considering that the last time he talked about the rest of his academy class was two years ago, to a verdict of 'they're all annoying,' you practically preen at the upgrade. "I agreed to train with some of them when I get back, and Hyuuga Arato gave me some tips for taking care of a doujutsu."

"That's great!" you say, because it _is_. Kakashi willingly interacting with his classmates, making _plans_ with them... A year ago it would have seemed impossible. A year ago he was relentless in his focus of protecting Rin at all costs, and barely interacted with anyone else. 

The recovery is... almost unnatural, but you know that Kojiro talked to him, too. And Kojiro was a miracle worker for Kushina, after Uzushio, and for Mikoto after Shiki died... You shouldn't be surprised that your old teammate was able to affect Kakashi, too.

(The always-on Hokage part of your brain spins half a speech about trees being broken by wind when they're standing alone, but a forest standing together, and you jot the thought down to turn into something for your anniversary speech. It's never too early to plan them out.)

The fact of the matter is, you've never known how to talk to Kakashi about grief. You've never known how to talk about grief at all, even though you've had your share of it, one teammate dead, the other unable to be a shinobi anymore, and your teacher walking off nearly as soon as you were self-sufficient.

(Kojiro was a miracle worker all of those times, too. You remember that hospital room, Nagisa dead and Kojiro's arm and leg blown off, and the way he smiled at you even though he couldn't sit up - )

(You push the pain away to smile, but Kojiro smiles through it. Smiles _because_ of it, cracking jokes that would be awful in anyone else's mouth.)

You should try. Not just for your sake, or his. You're Hokage now, and that means being responsible for all of Konoha's people. Even the ones who aren't in the village anymore. So you joke with Kushina the whole way through dinner, act the fool a bit for the 'new' Kakashi hiding a shit-eating expression under his mask when he brings up Jiraiya's writing, and when you're cleaning up, you catch Kushina's eye and make the village standard sign for 'I'm going ahead alone' where Kakashi won't see it.

She blinks once and nods. "I'll leave you boys to take care of the dishes, then," she says. "I think I'm going to take a nap."

"Isn't it just going to bed, at this point?" Kakashi asks.

Kushina just laughs. "Get good rest," she says. "And don't forget to write, y'know? It's going to be even quieter around here without you around."

Then she heads upstairs, leaving you and Kakashi alone. You grin and set to work on the dishes, letting the silence hang for a bit.

To your surprise, as you're trying to pick out your words, Kakashi says, "Are you really okay with letting me leave? After Rin and Obito, I thought you wouldn't want me to leave the village."

It's as good a starting point as any, and you pause in scrubbing a pan. "It's true that when I'm not with my precious people, that's always when bad things happen," you say. "Not just your team. I wasn't with Nagisa and Kojiro when their mission went bad, either."

Kakashi is silent. "But," you continue, "I can't be everywhere, even if my techniques let me get closer to that than anyone else. I have to trust in my comrades to come back safe."

You almost expect him to ask what happens when they don't, but he doesn't. He just stacks rice bowls neatly beside you to be washed.

After a long pause, he says, "I'm trusting you too, Sensei. Because if there's ever a point where I don't have comrades to come home to anymore... I won't be coming home."

You don't ask what he means by that. Whether it's becoming a missing-nin or going out in a blaze of glory... It's not your business. You understand enough.

You circle back to the mission at hand. You picked Kakashi because you wanted him out of the village for a while, because Danzo is far too interested in him, but those words make you think that perhaps you did choose the right shinobi for the job. That maybe, Kakashi can remind Tsunade that she has comrades waiting at home, too.

"That's all I'll ever ask," you say. 

Kakashi regards you for a moment, holding Kushina's chopsticks, and then you see his eye roll as he drops them in the sink. "You're Hokage now," he says. "You'll ask a lot more from me than that. And I'll give it, just... only as long as there's comrades to come home to."

You feign a dramatic sigh. "So intense. Maybe I should start training you up as my successor now so that I can retire early."

"What - Sen _sei_ \- "

You keep your grin at his sputtering internal, and instead continue in a maudlin ramble that would do Jiraiya proud, "Yeah, retiring sounds nice. Get to spend some time with the kids once they're born. I mean, Kushina's doing the hard part, the least I can do is stay home and change diapers after they're born, right?"

Kakashi switches from sputtering to glaring at you as best a teen who hasn't hit his growth spurt can. "Don't be lazy, Sensei," he admonishes. "Think about all the Academy students who are looking up to you now. You wouldn't want to disappoint their cute faces, right?"

"Aaaah, I suppose not," you say. Then you chuckle, and rinse the pan to put in the dishrack. "Don't worry, I won't make you be Hokage if you don't want to be. If nothing else, Obito would be mad at me."

There's a silence that's only long enough to notice because you know him so well, before Kakashi agrees, "He would be. And then he'd cry."

"And I'd be a horrible sensei if I made my students cry," you say. "Even from beyond the grave."

"It would start raining from a clear sky," Kakashi says, giving every appearance of looking thoughtful.

You laugh outright at that. Maybe you're not as bad at this combating grief with humor thing as you thought, or maybe Kojiro's finally rubbed off on you after so many years. Maybe it's Kakashi who's good at it. "It would, wouldn't it?"

"He'd come back just to kick your ass," Kakashi says sagely. "So don't make me Hokage."

"I won't," you say. "But I'll find _something_ for you to do, I'm sure."

Maybe you will let him into Anbu, if only so that you can have an Anbu Commander you can trust within the next ten years. The Sarutobi hands in that division are less overt than Danzo's, but that doesn't change that there aren't really many shinobi loyal to you there if things go south between you and the old guard.

You don't really have as many connections as you'd like. You're sure that's why you were picked for Hokage over the better-connected Orochimaru, or at least part of the reason. The council wants to continue the way they did under the Third, and until you build more alliances, you have to let them.

"Something other than tracking down stray Senju, you mean?" Kakashi asks, amused.

And why haven't you written a letter of your own to Tsunade? Just because she's not in the village doesn't mean she wouldn't be a valuable ally. Kushina is right, you miss the forest for the trees sometimes. 

If you stay up late writing one, you can shove it in Kakashi's hands before he leaves in the morning. You start washing dishes with renewed vigor.

"Something other than that," you agree. 

"Maybe even something more important," Kakashi says, voice innocent but his eye glittering. Kami, you wouldn't have guessed that the personality he locked behind grief after his father's death might have been knocked out of its cage by _more_ grief.

"Don't push your luck," you say.


	12. Other Side of the World VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obito meets the shinobi he'll be working with for the foreseeable future.
> 
> Kakashi leaves Konoha.
> 
> And Rin takes a risk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of part 2! Following this chapter, this fic is going on hiatus until September, for various reasons including "wow school ate my buffer" and "Final Fantasy XIV Patch 5.3." See you all then!

\----> Obito

Kirigakure's Infiltration and Communications Division is under the banner of Kiri Intelligence, located in a building that's far too large for it, especially when you consider that there's probably several floors of dungeons and interrogation chambers underneath. Officially, the top three floors aren't in use, which is as transparent a way of hiding an Anbu operation as you've ever seen. At least you didn't know where _Konoha's_ Anbu HQ was within your first month as a shinobi.

Of course, you were also a preteen with far less experience in the ways of shinobi at the time. Even growing up on the outskirts of a clan compound is no replacement for being in the thick of things, and you've been in the thick of things for a while now. And while you might have only ever stopped in Konoha's T&I to deliver messages, the vibe of Kiri Intelligence is similar enough that you're sure they have interrogations packed in under their header somewhere.

Which, you're fine with that as long as they don't make you do the torturing. (You'll leave that to the actual Kiri-nin who have the stomach for it.) Now that you think of it, it's kind of surprising that there weren't any Uchiha in T&I, since a huge number of other genjutsu specialists wind up there. 

You report in and let yourself be directed around for a bit, passing a trio of jounin in black coats who are _definitely_ interrogators, two equally obvious off-duty Anbu, and finally a desk with a gilled shinobi who appears to be very carefully extracting poison from a fresh pufferfish. It's the last one who points you in the right direction, with surprising friendliness for a poisoner, and you make a mental note to talk to him later if you get the chance. Maybe you can set up some kind of trade, if any of your more toxic siblings would be willing to share their venom.

Infiltration and Communications doesn't have any signage, but once you're through the door, you're surprised by how home-ish it feels. It's well-lit compared to the rest of Intelligence, and you realize quickly that the source is the mirrors along one wall, with big bright lightbulbs along the top, in a gradient from warm white at the end closest to you to almost chilly blue-white at the far end.

The other surprise is how many kunoichi are in here. You've heard plenty of things about how women supposedly make better spies, in Konoha, but that doesn't prepare you for a division where... You take a quick headcount of the figures you can see. Ten ninja, including you, and only one other guy in here, and one person in front of the mirrors doing make-up that you can't honestly be sure about. 

Well, whatever. Most of the scariest people in your life are women, with the list _definitely_ topped by one Uzumaki Kushina, so you can handle this. 

You make to head over to the desk, even though there doesn't seem to be any kind of officer in it, but before you can, a girl about your age leans into your view. Her hair is a light blue only a few shades darker than white, and when she grins, her teeth are just a little too sharp to be normal. (You would have called them sharklike a month ago, but you've met Kisame since then, and that kind of recalibrated your expectations.)

"Tobi, right?" she says, and without even waiting for your nod, she beckons you over to a screen cubicle in the back. "Get over here, you're stuck with us until we say otherwise."

"Oh, okay," you say, trying to act like you're not a little unsettled by this. You put on a smile and duck into the cubicle after her. There's _another_ girl in here, this one much smaller and with hair a much more normal shade of brown, and you blink for a moment before you place where you've seen her before. She's the girl from the photograph you saw in your infiltration assessment. "Hi?"

"Hi!" the new girl says. "Otoyo Yuzuki, and this is Hozuki Ritsuki. Welcome to Infiltration and Communications, and thanks for giving us someone to lord our newfound status as 'not the newest people in the division' over!"

"... Please take care of me, then, senpai," you say earnestly. There's something almost a little unsettling about her cheerfulness, and you feel like you might actually _need_ someone to take care of you.

"Just Yuzuki is fine," she says. Then she leans in closer to you, tilting her face up, and says, "Wow. Nee-san said that you had facial markings, but those are really something, aren't they?"

"Not so close, Yuzu, give him room to breathe," Ritsuki says, putting a hand on her companion's head and gently pushing her down. 

"Sorry, sorry," Yuzuki says. "But it's not often we get new people in here, especially not people who are from outside Kiri. You're the talk of the department right now."

"Oh, great," you mutter. "I didn't realize I got assigned to the gossip department."

Yuzuki pouts, but Ritsuki grins, showing a little less of her teeth this time. "Get used to it," she says. "Yukari-nee fought pretty hard to get you assigned here. We don't have a lot of strong fighters in Intelligence, and Ciphers snaps up most of them."

You put aside the question of why a cipher department would get most of the heavy hitters and sigh. "I'm not that strong of a fighter," you say instead.

Yuzuki stares at you, and then giggles. "You broke Hoshigaki's wrist with your _bare hands_!"

"Well, yeah, but..." You trail off. 

"Nope, you're our beefcake now," Yuzuki declares. Then she lifts her voice enough that it can be heard clearly outside the cubicle and says, "Hear that, Koichi? You're not our beefcake anymore! You're released from your duties!"

"Oh, fuck off, Otoyo," comes a masculine voice from the other side of the wall. 

You sternly remind yourself that according to Gemna's Shinobi Weirdness Rule ("A ninja's weirdness is directly proportional to their power level."), Yuzuki is one of the strongest people in the room. Probably. Either that, or she's a clan kid, and while you don't remember mention of an Otoyo clan from Kisame or Kinoka, that doesn't mean anything in itself. Rin had mostly asked about clans with weird anatomy going on.

You _do_ remember the name Hozuki from those discussions, and give Ritsuki another glance over, but there's nothing obvious out of the norm about her at the moment. She sees you looking, and the grin she's wearing flickers just a little.

"Yes, she's always like this," she says with a glance at Yuzuki, and you just nod. You don't say that it reminds you of someone you use to know, but you think Gai would have appreciated this level of enthusiasm far more than you do.

"Right!" Yuzuki says, clapping her hands. "Goggles off, let's see what we're working with here."

You blink again, but obligingly pull your goggles loose and let them drop down around your neck. The room gets significantly brighter without them, and you struggle not to squint. You've gotten used to the dark lenses even in shadowy areas the last few months.

Yuzuki leans in close to you again, looking thoughtful and making _hm_ noises. She gestures you to sit down in the chair next to you, and then _hm_ s some more as she leans over you.

"Well," she says finally, "Do you know anything about makeup application or are we starting from scratch here?"

"Not a thing," you say. "And I really mean that, so be merciful."

"Well, at least you won't have any bad habits," she says. "Ritsu, get this guy something so he can take notes, and let's get started."

\----

You still aren't sure exactly _why_ you've been suddenly shoved into Makeup For Idiots: Shinobi Edition, but by the end of the day (a full eight hours, not counting when you stopped for lunch and Yuzuki disappeared into some other department for most of an hour), you can at least appreciate how useful it is. Both for you, with the distinct markings you have now, and in _general_ for infiltrators and spies. A henge can be disrupted with chakra, but makeup can't, is the main thing to take away.

You have also learned that the anatomy weirdness of the Hozuki clan is that they can just _turn their bodies into water_ , as you discovered when Ritsuki demonstrated waterproof makeup. So there's that to tell Rin when you get home, after you run a single grocery shopping D-rank in the evening.

(Even Kiri _genin_ turn their noses up at them, and you don't understand why. Grocery shopping is the quickest and easiest way to earn a little pocket money, even if it offers less Real Shinobi Skills training than other D-ranks.)

"How did it go?" Rin asks when you come in the door, a sack of your own groceries that you picked up on the way slung over your arm.

"It turns out I've been assigned to the 'get your makeup done for eight hours' department," you say. "Is my mascara running?"

Rin giggles. "Do you even know what mascara is, Tobi?"

"I do _now_ " you say. "I also learned that shinobi makeup kits don't include it by default because you don't use it unless you want to _look_ like you have makeup on, and I'm under orders to get a nice compact mirror as soon as possible. We're probably going to need better bathroom lighting, because starting next month I'm supposed to come in with my foundation already done."

Rin giggles more. "Looks like you've found a new excuse to be late to things."

You groan. "I understand why now why so many kunoichi go into Intelligence or Seduction. How does anyone afford it without compensation from the department budget? Ritsuki told me her waterproof foundation costs as much as a formal dinner! And she goes through three of them every two months!"

"And now you know why I don't bother," Rin says, still laughing at you. 

"They gave me a face cleanser and it tastes _horrible_ ," you say.

"You put it in your mouth?"

"I taste with my fingers now, I know I told you that," you whine. 

"Right." Rin rolls her eyes, but whatever, she'll never understand your pain. All makeup tastes horrible except for things that are supposed to go on your lips, you've discovered so far today, and you doubt the rest of it is going to be any different. "Well, go put it in the bathroom and then come back out here and eat. Maybe you'll forget about it if you taste something better."

"Not likely," you grumble, but you proceed to the bathroom anyway.

\----> Rin

You shouldn't laugh at Obito's makeup-related troubles. You know that, and yet you can't help but laugh a little anyway, as he comes home every day for a week straight complaining about the cost, the taste, and the feeling of stuff on his face. This is capped off on Saturday afternoon, when he comes back with an armful of tiny scrolls and small ink brushes, and the horrified words "It _expires_ ," on his lips.

"What are the scrolls for?" you ask, leaning over his shoulder as he spreads them across the counter. You still don't have a proper table.

"You remember Sensei's sealing scroll that kept food warm?" he says, and you nod. "I'm going to make makeup sized ones and sell them to the rest of Comms. They stop having to spend so much on makeup that _fucking expires_ and I make us enough money to get some actual fucking furniture in here."

You laugh. "You realize that she left a table in your room, right?"

Obito stares at you for a moment, looks down at his scrolls, and then mutters, "I'm an idiot." You see the glint of red in his eye.

"Activate the seals first," you say blandly. "Just in case."

He sighs, and leaves the pile of scrolls on the counter to activate the stronger wards beside the door. Then in a twist of space, he disappears entirely.

You shake your head, laughing to yourself, and clear enough counter space for tea. Obito reappears a few minutes later, arms stretched out as far as they'll go to hold onto the edges of the table. You're pretty sure he's dislocated his shoulders _and_ his elbows to keep a hold of it.

"It says 'Made in Konoha' on the bottom," he says. "Hopefully no one looks too closely."

"Put that side against the wall," you suggest. "It takes up too much space in here otherwise, anyway."

Obito nods, and pushes the low, traditional-style table against the wall before putting it down. Then he rolls his shoulders to pop the joints back into place, and you reflect that that should distress you more than it actually does these days. You're so used to it that it almost looks normal.

You bring him the scrolls and brushes, trying to make a neater pile of them than he left on the counter. "Didn't you get ink?"

He shakes his head. "I figured I'd see if mine would work, first," he says. "It's just as chakra receptive as sealing ink, and that's expensive, so..."

You bite your lip. "Just be careful about giving anything with your ink to the entire department," you say. "There's a lot of jutsu that allow someone to find information about you that work off fingernail clippings or hair and I'm not sure if that would count."

"I'll be careful," he says. "But I don't even know if I can make the seals yet, so at least for experimenting...?"

You nod. "Okay. That's safe enough."

Obito grins and proceeds to shove the tip of a brush into his mouth. Well, at least if his ink works for sealing, you'll never run out of it, you suppose.

You move a seat cushion to the other side of the table and sit, resting your back against the wall. Soon, the scrape of brush against the paper fades into the roar of waves. You've gotten quicker at falling into the lagoon, and if the wards are already activated, there's no better time to try and have a discussion with your permanent guest.

You're not sure that you should still be thinking of the Sanbi as a guest, but until you have a name, you don't know if it will feel like he belongs there. And you're determined to get at least that much before you go asking Utakata for any more help, even if it takes a year.

The sand squishes under your weight. The sea spray hits your face. You open your eyes and stand.

There's no reaction, from the creature in the center of the lagoon. The waves continue against your sandbar.

There hasn't _been_ a reaction, any time you've come here and tried to talk. You've tried being polite, and you've gotten angry, and you've tried throwing your thoughts in the creature's direction when you feel him watching, which you've gotten increasingly good at lately. It's the only part of being a jinchuuriki you've improved at at all.

You look down at your feet. You focus and imagine them bare, the sand squishing between your toes, and the world obligingly changes to match your mental image. Your clothes are more similar to your Konoha gear than your Kiri gear, but with a blank forehead protector tied around your waist, where you've gotten used to wearing it, now.

You lift your foot, and bring it down at the edge of the sandbar, where the water coming in and out covers your foot. Chakra lights up against your senses, blue-green and wild, mostly water but tinted with earth. It pours into you in what is both a torrent and a trickle, because a trickle from a bijuu is about the same amount as the _most_ raw chakra that the average medic-nin can handle. 

But your chakra reserves have grown at a remarkable speed. You'll never be an Uzumaki, with so much chakra to spare that the idea of chakra exhaustion is foreign, but you think you understand why it's kids who are usually made into jinchuuriki, now. Your chakra reserves have grown to try and match the creature sealed inside you, swelling in an attempt to balance out your body's system against the foreign chakra, in a way that an adult with stable chakra coils wouldn't be able to manage. 

Jinchuuriki don't just have a lot of chakra because they draw on the power of the bijuu. They have a lot of chakra because their bodies are trying to find balance with it, because their chakra coils grow stronger against the pressure the same way skin grows a callus. Your chakra is thicker and tougher than it used to be and it isn't done growing.

You take another step, and more chakra washes over you. You wonder if you could stand on top of these waves the way you stood on top of the real ocean, refusing to let them touch you. You mentally apologize to Obito, who _has_ to be alarmed at this turn of events, because if the chakra is flowing through you here then it must be on the outside as well. And you take another step.

The Sanbi's chakra pushes and pulls like the waves of the real ocean at your ankles, at the sand under your feet. Even ankle-deep, it tugs at you, while waves crash on either side of you.

You remember Kushina warning you about riptides, the gaps between the waves that pull the unwary out to sea. She made you practice spotting them, one of the afternoons she could get away without anyone noticing, to give you what training she could, because there's no shoreline child who didn't learn to swim in the ocean, and where _not_ to swim, lest they be pulled out to sea.

As illogical as it is for there to be one in the protected middle of the lagoon, you are definitely standing in the center of one. And the chakra washes over your ankles and steals the sand from under your feet.

And you wade in.

(Kushina said that it would always be a battle for control, when you dipped into the Sanbi's chakra.)

(But if that's true, what does that mean about Utakata and Saiken?)

(Just this once, you find yourself not only hoping that one of your teachers is wrong, but _certain_ of it.)

You wade into the riptide, the place where the waves are still, where the water pulls at your legs. And the whole time, you watch the Sanbi, like he's been watching you.

The waves pull. Nothing more and nothing less. And under the edge of the shell, you think you see golden eyes, watching you back. 

Somewhere, with the crashing of waves almost drowning out your thoughts, you find your voice.

"Trust is just like the waves, isn't it? It has to flow in both directions."

And then you take one more breath, and you - 

_hope the wards hold_

_hope Obito will forgive you_

_hope you aren't wrong_

\- throw yourself into the ocean.

\----> Kakashi

You stay the night at Minato and Kushina's, in the spare room that will probably be set up as a nursery by the time you return. You've already packed your things into storage for the foreseeable future.

You're not entirely sure if you're going to go back to the same apartment when you get back, or even the same complex. The only real benefit to staying there is that Obito knows where it is, in case of an emergency. 

And it's not like that will do any good when you aren't there. 

Kushina is the only one awake when you come down the stairs. She puts a finger to her lips, and waits for your nod, before saying quietly. "Minato wanted to stay up to see you off, but I told him to go to bed two hours ago."

"Stay up?" you repeat.

In answer, Kushina pulls a scroll out of her pocket and hands it to you. "It only occurred to him _last night_ to write a letter to Tsunade himself."

You can't help it. You laugh, though you try to keep it as quiet as you can. Kushina giggles behind her hand.

"I know! He's still an idiot, you know?" She shakes her head fondly. "You could wait for him to wake up if you want, but I don't expect that to be any time soon."

You nod, taking the letter and tucking it in with the others. "I'll be on my way, then," you say. "I probably shouldn't waste daylight."

"Always thinking of the mission," Kushina says. She reaches out, and you think she's going to ruffle your hair, but instead she wraps her arms around you. "I'm so proud of you, you know? You're going to be so great. You already _are_ so great."

You stiffen slightly, but don't pull away. You just stand there, unsure what to do.

"You can hug me back, you know," Kushina says, like she's reading your mind.

You lift your arms awkwardly and wrap them around her back. You squeeze a little. You're pretty sure that's how a hug is supposed to go.

"Mmm, still needs a little practice," Kushina says. "We'll work on it. Gotta get your hugging up to standard by the next time you see them again, right?"

You don't breathe for half a second, and then you nod. "She'd be disappointed in me."

"She'd be proud of you for trying," Kushina says firmly.

"If anything happens while I'm not here..." you start. Kushina whacks a hand against your back.

"They'll be _fine_ , Kakashi," she says. "They're skilled and also good at making friends. They'll fit in fine."

You nod stiffly, and slide out of her arms. She lets you go. You don't tell her that that's what you're worried about, that the thing you're worried about is that they won't want to come back.

It's _Kiri_ , you remind yourself. Ruthless and vicious Kirigakure, home of monsters.

"I'm just worried about them," you say.

"They'll be fine," Kushina says. There's something wistful in her expression. "Even if you don't believe it, believe it."

You roll your eyes. "That makes no sense, Kushina-san."

"It doesn't have to make sense, brat," she says, putting her hands on her hips. "Just do it. Feel it in your gut instead of overthinking it."

"Right." You'll deal with figuring out how that's supposed to work later. "I should go. Wasting daylight, remember?"

Kushina sighs. "Be safe, Kakashi," she says. 

"I'll be fine," you promise. "And I'll see you soon."

"You'd better," she says. "Or I'll take it out of your hide."

You don't doubt her. You grab the bag by the door, put on your shoes, and head out the door, not looking back until you're at the village gates. Only there do you hesitate. It's your first time out of the village since Obito and Rin, your first time leaving since the war ended, your first time leaving _alone_.

And then you put one foot in front of the other, until you're through the gates.

And you look back, and push up the headband over your eye, to capture the village in the early morning light. 

"We'll be back," you promise, before you slide Rin's forehead protector back over your eye.

_All three of us, someday, will walk through those gates together again._

\----> Rin

You submerge.

And you feel it around you, the thick chakra of the Sanbi. You feel the pull of the riptide carrying you out to sea, out to the cage that represents the seal, and you fear for a moment that you won't be able to come back up for air.

You risk breathing. It's just your mindspace, you're not actually underwater, so it should be fine, right? And so you breathe, and it _is_ fine, and you open your eyes.

Coral.

You're surrounded by coral, in bright colors and fans and antlers and mounds, as much as you can imagine and more, filtered by blue light. And it's beautiful.

And where the chakra is thickest, the coral grows. Water and earth.

You kick to the surface, not fighting the current, but breaking your head above it. The lagoon seems too small to hold the wealth of a reef that you saw underneath, but it doesn't _have_ to make sense, does it?

You push the wet hair away from your face and tread water just in front of the cage. This close, you can feel the layers in the seal, the unknown original sealer's chakra mixing with Kushina's patch-up. 

You reach out with one hand and touch the bars, then jerk your fingers back at the crackle of energy that tingles up them. Then you huff a breath, reach out, and use the bar to pull yourself out of the water until you're sitting on the sand the Sanbi rests on, most of your body inside the cage but your feet still hanging outside.

It's probably terribly dangerous. But you haven't drowned yet. You haven't been washed away. You have to trust that that will hold.

So you sit, perched and sinking slightly into the just-barely-underwater sand next to the Sanbi's massive claw, and you say - 

"Thank you."

The claw beside you shifts. And finally, _finally_ , you feel that great attention on you. Not _through_ you, but _on_ you, a distinction you didn't know you had to make until you made it.

" **What do you want from me? You've already shown that you don't care about my power. So what is it?** "

The words have a resentful, almost hopeless quality to them. As though there isn't even a _point_.

"Well," you start, pausing. "I'd like to know your name, if you're willing to tell me."

Silence. You take a deep breath.

"I'm Nohara Rin. But even my best friend can't call me that right now, because of the situation we're in," you continue. "So I think it would be nice if you were able to call me that."

To hold on to that part of you, even a little bit. To know that you're still the same person, even with everything that's happened. To have value other than this _thing_ that happened to you.

You're not the only one this happened to. You have to remember that.

"And I'd like to be friends," you say. "Because your power shouldn't be the only thing that's valuable about you. And... I still _might_ need it, someday. If that happens, I'd rather work _with_ you, instead of just _taking_ it."

Silence. And then the claw next to you moves, and you force yourself not to tense, and - 

The Sanbi shoves you off the sand, back into the water, but when your head slips under, you jerk back to awareness in your body instead, gasping and jerking away from the wall.

Obito's hands are on your shoulders, shaking you, and his face is in front of yours, Sharingan spinning. "Rin? Rin, answer me, are you - "

"I'm fine," you say, shutting your eyes. "I... might have done something risky, but it's fine."

"I _noticed_ ," Obito says, withdrawing his hands. You realize that the Sanbi's chakra is still coursing actively through your body.

Right. Of course he would have noticed that. "Sorry," you say, and you work to slowly let go of the chakra. It doesn't fade entirely, but it abates enough that you can feel your own underneath, and that will have to do for now.

"You scared the shit out of me," he says. When you open your eyes, you realize that his hands are red, like they've been burned.

"Your hands - " you start.

"It's fine," he says. "She wasn't kidding about that chakra burning, but it's fine."

"Idiot," you say. "Come here." And before he can object, you take one of his hands and pour your chakra into it until the red fades away. It's looser than you normally do your healing, not as deeply precise, but you're still working on separating out your own chakra, and you've always been more precise than you needed to be, according to your instructors. He gives you the other one without making you grab it.

"It really is fine," Obito insists when you're done. "I was scared that... That it wouldn't be you that opened your eyes."

"I know," you say. "It... might not have been. I'm sorry, I took a risk."

"Well," Obito says, "did it work?"

"I don't know," you admit. "I was able to get the Sanbi's attention, that's for sure, but... I feel like I didn't make any progress. I should have at least warned you."

"You're still trying," Obito says. "That's worth something."

"Is it?" you ask.

"How many times did I have to try before Kakashi would give me the time of day?" Obito replies, with a grin. You can't help it, you laugh.

"Okay, maybe you have a point." You're quiet for a moment, and then you say, "I don't really know how to explain it. There's the lagoon around the cage, and the sandbar, and... I kind of jumped in."

A pause. Obito reaches out and flicks you in the forehead. You wince, reaching up to rub your head.

"That was incredibly reckless and could have gone super badly," he says. "...And I really don't have any room to talk, so pretend it's Sensei lecturing you instead."

"I know it was reckless," you say. "And I'm trying to be patient, really, because I know that I'm dealing with something older than we can _ever_ understand, and the Sanbi has every right to be angry about the whole thing, but I just... I don't know if I can ever make it right, but it's not like I can just not _try_."

Your shoulders shake. The foreign chakra stays in your stomach, making you as nauseated as if the ocean was really in there, churning waves and all. 

"And he's still watching," you say, "so it's not like he's completely shut down. I finally got him to say something to me today and it was almost like he's angry at me for _not_ wanting to use his power. What am I supposed to do about that? What am I supposed to _say_?"

You're not really looking for answers. You don't know if there are answers. Obito wraps one arm around your shoulders.

"You'll figure it out," he says. "You've got a whole lifetime, right?"

"I don't know," you say. "What if Ao wants me to use that power when I get thrown into Anbu? I said that I don't want to just _take_ it, and I mean that. I don't want to go back on my word, but what if I have to?"

"Then no one can blame you for trying until you had no choice," Obito says firmly. "And if the Sanbi holds it against you then, then he's not worth all the effort you've been putting in, and I'll kick his giant scaled ass myself."

You can't help it. You laugh, squeezing your eyes shut and leaning into his shoulder. You laugh until you can almost forget about the chakra only slightly calmer in your stomach. Obito, eventually, laughs with you, his hand squeezing your shoulder with enough strength that it starts to hurt, but you don't care.

"Thank you," you say when the laughing subsides enough that you can breathe. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

"You'd be just as amazing," he says. You both pretend, for a moment, that you wouldn't be dead.

"Maybe," you say, "but I wouldn't be _me_."

\----

The feeling of scrutiny doesn't fade away through the rest of the evening, and neither does the feeling of chakra in your belly. It's faded enough that the seals on your skin aren't active anymore, but _you_ can still feel it.

You're standing in front of the cracked mirror in the dark bathroom, checking for the seals, when you feel it, like a ripple through your body, a wave washing over your feet.

_**My name is Isobu.** _

You don't whoop with joy at the heavens. You don't let on very much at all to the outside world.

You face the mirror, with a tired smile, and say, "It's nice to meet you."


End file.
